Cheyenne Arts Celebration looks to grow in second year

Aug. 6—The Cheyenne Arts Celebration will look a little smaller in its second year.

Don't be fooled — there's much more going on this time around.

Last year, the event was intended to be a revival of a similar arts festival hosted by Arts Cheyenne up until 2017. Funding, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, prevented the event from making a resurgence.

That is, until 2019. That is when Arts Cheyenne board president Mike Morris, who at the time was board vice president, biked past the Brimmer Amphitheater in Lions Park. He wondered why there was no recurring festival occupying that stage at least once a year.

The inaugural Arts Celebration fills that need by turning the park and stage into a mini art festival.

In 2022, they're making a slight move, abandoning the amphitheater due to a scheduling conflict and instead securing the stage used for Fridays on the Plaza. The event will move to the west side of the park, near the softball field, introducing twice as many art vendors, a bigger lineup of musicians and more food options.

"We're providing an arena for local visual artists and musicians to showcase their really exceptional talents for the greater community," Morris said in a recent interview. "By having it in the most prominent park in Cheyenne, and having it free and open to the community in the middle of the summertime, the hope is really that this festival feels like it belongs to Cheyenne.

"The festival is what people want to make it. It really is for the community."

Morris, who plays a prominent role among the Arts Cheyenne board members who organize the event, is developing a long-term strategy for growing the Arts Celebration. In many ways, the board is still figuring out what this event is ultimately going to be.

Last year, the celebration was held later in the day and was scheduled to stretch into the night. As the sun dropped, so did the temperature, leaving attendees and vendors to linger around the park cold and in the dark. The latter resulted in increased reliance on the stage's concert lighting, revealing multiple issues for the musicians.

Since they don't have the amphitheater for the concert this year, they decided to shorten the length of the festival significantly, packing more content into a shorter span of time.

Experimenting

As far as Morris is concerned, the festival is still in an "experimental phase."

"A large-scale swath of the artist's community is going to be showcased," Morris said. "I think that's really cool. You go to an art festival in a bigger urban metro area, and you're expecting to see dozens of different kinds of exhibitions and stuff. I think we're growing that component of it."

Arts Cheyenne wants this event to be one that develops over time into being an essential part of the local arts community, as well as the city's popular culture.

"It certainly is not an overnight process, building an enduring community fixture," he said. "I mean, Edge Fest — it took a number of years to really get that to stick. But one year they turned the corner and had an exponential leap. We're gonna keep working at it so we have that exponential leap."

To cultivate a more family friendly environment, Arts Cheyenne collaborated with the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens to help provide a children's activity.

Inspired by Bria Hammock's colorful art style and her involvement with the gardens, an outdoor painting project is on tap.

Botanic Gardens

Trees separating the Paul Smith Children's Village and the road leading into the park out front of the Botanic Gardens will be wrapped in workable cellophane. Kids will then have the freedom to coat the trees in paint however they see fit.

"Aaron Sommers came up with a cellophane thing, and we did it last year," said Tina Worthman, director of the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens. "But as far as art, we usually get inspiration for whoever the artist is that we have on exhibit at the gardens, and then kind of take that as a starting point."

The Botanic Gardens will essentially serve as the entry point to the festival grounds. The Children's Village will remain open during the event, as well, providing kids with regularly scheduled classes and activities during the Arts Celebration.

Morris also sees the addition of children's activities to the festival as an important way to get youth engaged with art and art programming. The same goes for the collection of musicians being featured in the Arts Celebration, many of whom are Cheyenne locals.

The local lineup consists of singer/songwriter Anthony Hutton, rapper Onwuka, rap duo Pocketbook Prophet and VanteSlayedIt, as well as honorary Cheyenneite and singer/songwriter Olivia Frances, based out of Nashville.

Traveling in for the festival is Bison Bone, from Denver; Proxima Parada, from San Luis Obispo, California; and Joe Hertler & the Rainbow Seekers, the most prominent act of the festival, from Lansing, Michigan.

At least for this year, the goal is to create a small "park festival" for residents to wander into and enjoy during a day outside as creatives do their thing all around them.

"We just hope that this time around, the community really latches onto it. I don't want to necessarily compare the two events, but we'd love to sort of be like how Superday is, but for the visual arts and culture," Morris said. "This whole community experience, just having a day out in the park."

Will Carpenter is the Wyoming Tribune Eagle's Arts and Entertainment/Features Reporter. He can be reached by email at wcarpenter@wyomingnews.com or by phone at 307-633-3135. Follow him on Twitter @will_carp_.