Hundreds of Edmontonians packed the Alberta Aviation Museum Sunday for the Edmonton Pop Culture Fair.
The fair is one of the biggest of its kind in western Canada – and this year featured 120 vendors coming from all across Alberta, B.C. and Saskatchewan.
John do Rosario, event organizer, says it’s a big draw for people to come down and check out a variety of toys, games, collectibles, comic books and other items that cover a wide-range of topics in popular culture.
“It basically covers something for everyone,” do Rosario said.
“Pop culture can be anything that’s popular right now or in the past. It’s a super wide variety.”
Artist Robert Bailey was one of the vendors for the day – he was selling and displaying his original Star Wars drawings.
“They are post-production creations of all the main Star Wars characters and secondary characters. Some are actual frames of the movie and some are new scenes or standalone characters,” Bailey said.
The artist has been drawing Star Wars exclusively for the last four years.
“George Lucas was looking at people’s websites including my own and at that time I was doing World War II exclusively and he liked the combat situations I was creating in oil so one of his cohorts phoned me and asked if I would do Star Wars and so that’s what I’ve been doing for the past four years,” Bailey said.
“George Lucas has the first option to buy. He owns a number of the original drawings I’ve done and a number of the original Star Wars paintings.”
Bailey’s works were selling for $100 apiece and $300 for larger pieces.
His drawings sold out a few weeks ago when he attended the Toronto Fan Expo and he says he’s having a blast at the Edmonton Pop Culture Fair.
“I think this is great. There were 200 people lined up outside just before 10 a.m. this morning and the place is packed. We’re really, really pleased about that. This is the place to be today that’s for sure,” Bailey said.
Do Rosario agrees – adding that each event is bigger than the last and Sunday’s fair was expected to draw in 2,000 people.
“The response has been really great,” he said.
“It’s growing bigger and bigger each year and we have more and more vendors and more and more attendees.”
The fair is a bi-annual event and do Rosario says it originally began in the ‘80s.