Charlie Grosjean remembers the first one, when you could sit in a corner and see the whole fair.The potter had left his Franklin home at dawn to set up a display of his dinnerware in the Mount Desert Island High School gymnasium. He and 40 or 50 other craftspeople from the recently incorporated statewide Directions: Maine Crafts Guild had come to see what they could sell. Not wholesale or at a craft co-op; those venues they knew. Ditto for barn-board arrays in the front yard; a lot of them had chosen to live in rural Maine where land was (still) cheap, and they’d done plenty of that. This was a new retail show with its own direction and commitment to Maine artisans who wanted to make their way of life their livelihood. It was 1975.

Sitting on his porch overlooking Hog Bay Creek with his wife Susanne, surrounded by pots and bright loops of yarn she spins and hand-dyes for her weaving, Grosjean recalls pocketing maybe $150 that day and being tickled. “We were all just beginning then,” Suzy says. “Those early Directions fairs were like a homegrown picnic. There were piles of children, and we used to bring a trunk of toys, plus pots and ponchos and rugs. We fed kids chocolate and let them nap behind the booths. People still want beautiful work handmade, but,” she smiles, “we have evolved.”

Thirty years later, those picnics have become an artistic feast for the senses. When the doors to the MDI gym open this Friday night (the fair’s been there every year) for what’s now an annual three-day event drawing an audience of more than 3,500, people will step into what Randy Fein, the show’s coordinator for 16 years, describes as “90 different galleries under one roof. Elegant. Beautifully lit. Professional.”

Baskets, clay, fiber, wood, jewelry, paper, glass – guild members in these media and more, all juried in according to tough standards set by the organization, will be showing. The Directions logo points the way: look for “Crafts That Transcend the Ordinary.”

Transcending the ordinary?

Stephen Hensel, a musician and lobsterman from Friendship who works with at-risk children, also makes wild-bird carvings that appear in museum collections. Sister Bette Edl, a Franciscan nun who lives in a yurt in Stockton Springs, weaves wearable art. Commissioned stoneworkers Joe and Shlomit Auciello will tow their trailer from Warren packed with a ton of transformed rock; Laura Balombini (twice rejected when she applied as a weaver in the late 80s) will have just returned to Blue Hill from Italy after teaching multimedia figurative sculpture there for a week; this, she says, “is the only fine crafts show in the state I apply to.” Jo Diggs, a fiber artist in Portland who served on the board 20 years and witnessed the transformation from clip-on lights to halogen accents, plans to bring “Summer,” one of her big four-seasons quilts – not for sale, but to show what she calls “the spirit of the work.”

That spirit, says Ellsworth glassblower Linda Perrin, helps make this craft show exceptional because it works on more than one level: artistic expression, culture, community. Perrin, the guild’s jury chair since 2003 and the show’s co-coordinator, puts it this way: “As an artist, there’s nothing better than being able to show your most heartfelt work and have it appreciated. Not only will people buy it and give it a home, but you’ve also been judged by a jury of peers supporting the highest quality, skill, and artistic integrity. In a culture where fewer people are doing hands-on work, this show and the people in it are preserving a way of life.”

During her tenure, Fein says the show’s revenue has steadily climbed. The first year, the total jumped from $65,000 to $100,000. “Now,” she says, “that figure is doubled and then some. Phenomenal clientele,” is how she describes who comes to this creative party.

Charlie Grosjean, who’s been to all but one show, knows this. The chocolate-smeared kids napping behind a booth have grown up. They – or their parents – are finally out of college and want something transcending the ordinary to celebrate. “Every year, someone comes back,” Suzy says. “They come to our corner and announce, ‘It’s time for the rug.'”

Directions: Maine Craft Guild Show

When: July 29-31

Time: 5-9 p.m. Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday

Where: Mount Desert Island High School, Bar Harbor

Contact: 763-3433 and www.mainecraftguild.com