For the past five years, downtown Ardmore has become a festive fall destination as dozens of scarecrows have popped up to decorate the benches, sidewalk and streetlights for Create Ardmore’s Scarecrow Contest.
A recently published book, “Something to Crow About,” documents all of them. The book is by local photographer Paige Miller, who took the majority of photos. She also compiled them all together and formatted them for publication.
This is Miller’s second collection of Ardmore photography. In 2020, she released “Create Art More” which featured the city’s public art. In many ways, her new book stems from the first.
“When we did the ‘Create Art More’ book four years ago, we knew we were going to do a second edition at some point,” Miller said. “About a year and a half ago I met with Maria (Wilkinson, Create Ardmore board president) and talked about getting together a second edition.”
The topic of the scarecrows came up, with the idea being to dedicate a couple pages to them in the second collection. But that proved to be a daunting task.
“We thought more and more about that, but it was so hard to choose,” Miller said. “There were just so many good and creative scarecrow ideas that we decided to make them into their own book.”
She actually already had photos of the vast majority of the scarecrows. She joked that she has been the unofficial scarecrow photographer since 2020, and now she’s been made official.
“That first year I was not a participant in Create Ardmore, so Maria actually took those pictures,” Miller said. “Starting the second year, I volunteered to take pictures because I love the scarecrows so much. I wanted to take good pictures to post online for people who have maybe moved away or aren’t able to get downtown. Everyone gets to see them when we post them to our Create Ardmore page.”
“Something to Crow About” is available for $15 in cash or check at Maria’s Garden, Ardmore Main Street Authority, Marvin’s Place Art Gallery and The 7 on Broadway. Miller herself will also be selling and signing copies of her book during the Scarecrow Stroll when Scarecrow Contest returns for 2024. All proceeds go to Create Ardmore.
“We’re going to be set up during the Scarecrow Stroll on the evening of Oct. 1,” she said. “This will be our third year to have the stroll, and it’s a really fun night for everyone to come downtown, enjoy the scarecrows and meet the people who built them.”
Details of the 2024 Scarecrow Contest will be published in an article in the Tuesday, Sept. 3 edition of The Ardmoreite.
