Columbus Arts Festival making much-welcomed comeback after two-year hiatus
For two years, artists and arts lovers have missed the biggest outdoor summer celebration in Downtown Columbus.
No more. The (almost) annual Columbus Arts Festival returns Friday through Sunday. Some 500,000 people are expected to attend to savor the visual arts, entertainment and food packed into a one-mile loop at the Scioto Riverfront.
“I’m so excited it’s back. It’s the best free ticket in town,” said Lonni Thompson, a German Village resident who has been attending the Arts Festival since the mid-1980s.
“It feels great,” said Arts Festival Director Sean Kessler. “Fingers crossed for great weather.”
How the Columbus Arts Festival began
The Greater Columbus Arts Council, which presents the festival, is calling this year’s event the 60th — counting from the first festival in 1962.
That first festival in 1962 took place on the Statehouse lawn at Broad and High streets.
In a video celebrating the festival’s 50th anniversary, civic leader Norman Folpe recalled how a committee he led decided that more cultural and entertainment events were needed Downtown. A stage was erected in front of the state capitol and dozens of artists’ booths were set up on the lawn for the weekend festival.
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The festival continued at that location, coming under the direction in 1974 of the newly-created Greater Columbus Arts Council (GCAC). Programming for children was added along with more performers and artists. Among those early participating artists were the celebrated woodcarver Elijah Pierce and master photographer Kojo Kamau.
Outgrowing the Statehouse lawn, the festival moved to the Scioto Riverfront in 1982, where it stayed through 2007. In 1985, Ray Hanley, the new president of the Greater Columbus Arts Council, pushed the festival to become bigger and better. Generally, the festival ran for a weekend but in 1991, primarily because Columbus was hosting the National Assembly of Local Arts Councils conference, the festival was a 10-day event.
Because of ongoing Scioto Mile redevelopment, the festival moved east to the Discovery District near the Columbus College of Art & Design in 2008, then back to the Scioto Riverfront in 2011, where it remained until the COVID-19 pandemic that disrupted just about every facet of life.
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“Calling off the festival in 2021 was hard, but not as hard as calling it off in 2020,” Kessler said. “It was never a question of do you want to postpone. Artists build their year going around the country and doing these festivals. In 2021, there weren’t enough people vaccinated and there were these other surges coming. It was all about keeping people safe.”
In September 2021, artist applications opened and by February 2022, Kessler said,
GCAC was pretty confident the festival would go forward.
What to expect at this year's arts festival
The 2022 festival will have fewer artists — 212 compared to a festival high of more than 300 — partly to ensure the health and safety of all as well as to work around some construction still happening on the grounds.
Artists’ booths and stages will be found along the riverfront and across both the Rich and Main Street bridges. Three stages will offer live entertainment and a new feature, Film at the Fest, will show movies all day and family-friendly films Friday and Saturday evening.
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About 30 food trucks (no food tents this year) and drink stands — lemonade and beer are the top sellers — will be on-site.
The festival costs about $1.2 million to put on, paid for through sponsor contributions, artist booth fees and beer sales — the latter a critical source of revenue for the presenting GCAC.
“If it’s brutally hot or wet, people don’t buy alcohol,” said Jami Goldstein, GCAC vice president for marketing, communications and events. (The sweet spot for maximum beer sales seems to be temperatures of between 78 and 82 degrees.)
The artists participating at the festival
Artists will be coming from 36 states and Ontario, Canada, to show and sell their work in a variety of mediums: ceramics, drawing, fiber, glass, jewelry, leather, mixed media, photography, painting, sculpture and more.
After submitting pictures of their work, artists are selected by a blind jury of five local art experts. The artists pay a small application fee and then a booth fee, ranging from $600 to $2,000 depending on the size and amenities of their booth. All the proceeds from their art sales are theirs. The average sales for an artist is $8,000 over the three days.
Larry Allen, a potter from Leeds, Alabama, has attended about 10 Columbus Arts Festivals and plans to be back this year. A veteran of arts festivals across the country, he ranks the Columbus festival in “the top tier of art shows.”
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During COVID, Allen said, he sold works online, something he prefers not to do.
“I like meeting people at festivals, and I really hate packing stuff up and mailing it,” he said.
More artists and entertainment highlighted
In addition to the artists selected by jury, about 30 central Ohio artists will show and demonstrate their crafts in the Big Local Arts Village.
In the Children’s Art Gallery, a longstanding feature of the arts festival, kids can purchase artist-donated works for $5 or less. (My 30-something daughter has hanging in her home a beautiful photograph purchased for $5 at the arts festival when she was in grade school.)
Music, dance, theater, storytelling, spoken word and more live performances will take place on three stages on the festival grounds. Among the entertainers scheduled: The Deal Breakers, Kelly Zullo & The Invisible Circus, Largemouth Brass Band, Columbus Celtic Dancers, Columbus Children’s Theatre, Shadowbox Live and members of the Black Women Rise Poetry Collective.
And inevitably, street performers show up. Miami University student Sean Perry, 20, has strolled the grounds playing his fiddle in about 10 festivals. He said he started when he was 10 years old.
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Street performers at the festival, he said, “contribute to this atmosphere of discovery … I’ve had so many parents stop and ask about how to get their kids involved in learning the violin. It’s a wonderful experience and I’m glad to spread my love of music.”
And what about the weather?
The big question mark is the weather.
In recent years, the Arts Festival suffered two dismal weather years — 2011 when wind in the form of El Derecho tore through the grounds, and 2015 when it rained, rained, rained.
Kessler recalls holding up part of an artist’s tent that was flapping in strong winds as the artist continued to make a sale. Goldstein remembers standing in a couple inches of water in another tent.
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“The single most frustrating thing about running an outdoor festival is weather you can’t control,” she said.
Festival fans eager for event's return
Among those hoping for clement weather are Mike Maly and his husband, Greg Maly, who’ve been going to the arts festival since the late 1990s, meeting artists and purchasing works for their Woodland Park home.
“It’s an amazing and diverse group of artists from all over the country,” Mike Maly said. “We’ve bought acrylic paintings, glass sculptures, iron sculptures … This year we want to get a new outdoor glass sculpture.”
Maly said the festival is open-air, and they are “vaxed and boosted and not concerned about COVID.”
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“We’re so glad the festival is back,” he said. “There are so many things in this country that divide us now, but this is one thing that brings us together.”
Lonni Thompson agreed.
“COVID’s not going away, but we can’t put our lives on hold forever,” she said.
“The festival has brought life to the Downtown riverfront. I look around my house and see things that I’ve bought there that are unique — like the wire monkey hanging from my 120-year-old magnolia tree that everyone chuckles at … The arts festival is a cultural event that brings people together and this year makes coming together even more treasured.”
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At a glance
The Columbus Arts Festival will take place Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Downtown by the Scioto Riverfront. Hours: 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. Friday, 10 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. The festival is free. For more information, including parking and alternativesvisit www.columbusartsfestival.org.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus Arts Festival returns after two-year pandemic break
