Atomic Energy

Sarasota had never seen anything like it.

Inside the Sarasota Municipal Auditorium, fashionably outfitted crafters and artisans arranged hand-printed T-shirts on hangers, adjusted brightly colored collage signs and made sure they had enough cash to make change. Outside, in the midday sunlight, a line had formed, maybe 50 deep. Young, eager shoppers milled about, making small talk to kill the minutes before the official opening of the first Atomic Holiday Bazaar.

The alternative craft fair was the brainchild of Adrien Lucas and Cemantha Crain and came about after a visit to the Stitch Fashion Show and Guerilla Craft Bazaar in Austin, Texas, inspired Lucas to do something similar here in town. Vendors hocked bags constructed out of old sweaters, earrings made from reused materials and wallets featuring designs from airplane safety instructions.

This stuff was fresh, young and awesome. And the line snaking down the sidewalk in front of the Municipal Auditorium proved that Sarasota was hungry for it.

Joey Jacco pauses. He thinks for a moment, trying to recall if anything like Atomic had ever happened in town before last December. The bespectacled 23-year-old, who will set up his first-ever booth on Sunday, shakes his head slowly and answers carefully: "Probably not."

If there had been, Jacco would have known about it. He was raised in Sarasota, went to Pine View for high school and then majored in illustration at Ringling College of Art and Design, graduating in 2006.

Nowadays, he pays his bills working at Sarasota News & Books, crafting in his spare time. He began with home-printed illustrated kids' books and already has a pair of titles under his belt: Caps 'n Cooper and Pips 'n Soda. Both feature animal characters drawn in a simple, colorful style. The books come straight from work Jacco did as an undergrad. Alternative comic artists such as Daniel Clowes inspired Jacco to go to Ringling; when it came time to do his senior project, he wanted to merge the comic style he loved with a focus on kiddies.

He's sold around 10 of each, some through his website, the rest through his proud dad, who talks up the books and buys them as presents. Jacco's profile should be raised considerably by his participation in this year's Atomic, and he's also branched out by learning to sew. He began working by hand, got a sewing machine as a Christmas gift last year and quickly began cranking out plush, fuzzy pillows and stuffed animals, again with a simple, flat-color style.

Like most other part-time alt-crafters, Jacco harbors dreams of making a living off his art. "I don't really have high hopes of that happening anytime soon," he admits, "but maybe, at the very least, it will, somewhere down the line, get me a job." For now, he just needs to crank out more merchandise so he can fill his booth on the Atomic floor.

Heather Sorrells can sympathize. Another 23-year-old Atomic first-timer, Sorrells will bring her vintage-inspired jewelry, accessories and buttons south from St. Petersburg this weekend.

Sorrells grew up in Panama City and moved to the Florida west coast in 2003 to attend Eckerd College. When she began crafting, she didn't intend to turn a profit; her pieces were just for herself and her friends.

She borrows her style from decades past. "I've always been in love with vintage imagery and classic movies," Sorrells says. "Since I was 12, I've been obsessed with classic movies." Her family provides the material; she's found a wealth of images in her grandmother's old magazines. "I'm sort of in love with the '40s and '50s," she says.

Sorrells graduated from Eckerd with a degree in biology earlier this year and has enrolled in the pharmacist program at a University of Florida satellite campus in Seminole. Designing necklaces and bags has kept her sane while studying the hard sciences.

She saw others selling pieces like hers on the alt-crafting networking site etsy.com and decided to give it a go last December, selling her items under the banner Niphty. Like Jacco, she daydreams about supporting herself with her designs, but crafting is still just a hobby, albeit one that earns her a little cash on the side.

Sorrells missed the inaugural Atomic, but found out about version 2.0 when she started searching for venues to sell her wares. Her application was one of more than 150 that Atomic co-founders Lucas and Crain received this year, up from around 70 in 2006.

For Lucas, the reason behind the snowball is simple: Last year's event tapped into a hungry, under-the-radar audience. "When we did the budget last year," she says, "we budgeted for 200 people through the door, and we had 1,000 to 1,200 people." Word about the high attendance spread: "So many people are talking about the show."

The owner of one of the few shops in town carrying alt-crafts, Laura Daniel Gale, says Atomic opened up a "portal" for young artisans to connect and interact. Her Rosemary District store, everything but the girl, has benefited. "I feel like Atomic brought out the young artsy crowd that I'd been searching for," says Gale, who's friends with Lucas and Crain and is producing the Atomic fashion show this weekend.

All that existing momentum didn't stop Lucas from again pushing the guerilla marketing practices she used to pump up turnout for last year's Atomic. She got her first promo postcards in April and immediately began flagging down everyone she could. "I hit up mothers at the grocery store," she says with a laugh, "women who looked like they used to be punk rockers." When accosting strangers, Lucas delivers her Atomic tag line: It's a craft fair that won't make you puke. If people get it, cool. If it confuses them, they're probably not Atomic material anyway.

Lucas doesn't want to speculate about this year's potential attendance, but she's optimistic, even suggesting that the festival might outgrow the Municipal Auditorium before too long. She and Crain have their eye on Payne Park. "They have a great facility," Lucas says. "It looks like The Brady Bunch rec room." In the retro-fixated world of alternative crafting, there may be no higher compliment.

Wherever Atomic takes place in the coming years, you can bet that this city won't have seen anything like it. Except, of course, for past Atomic Holiday Bazaars.