Magic is undeniable at Art in the Park, a Columbia Art League tradition
Dave Eggers' new novel for young readers, "The Eyes & The Impossible," revolves around a free, fast-moving dog named Johannes. "The Eyes" in the title, each day Johannes ascends to the highest point of the park he inhabits to keep watch, surveying his corner of the world and ensuring life unfolds as it should for all creatures.
Columbia Art League Executive Director Kelsey Hammond permitted herself a similar moment at last year's Art in the Park. Taking a tip from previous CAL leader Diana Moxon, she ascended a rise overlooking much of Stephens Lake Park to watch life happen and hum, to see how volunteers converted a 116-acre park into a home for artists and art lovers.
The moment was big enough, yet intimate enough, to make Hammond catch her breath. To keep her placing one foot before the other as Art in the Park approaches again this summer.
"If you lose sight of what that feeling was, then you think, ‘What are we doing this for?' " she said.
A CAL tradition since 1959, the two-day art bazaar will enfold dozens of traveling and local artists June 3 and 4, creating moments of beauty and community as it goes.
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Making magic
Last summer's Art in the Park felt like a sort of homecoming after a two-year pandemic hiatus.
Patrons who hadn't ventured out to cultural events since the start of COVID, who hadn't known the warm rush of touch after running into an old friend renewed their experience, Hammond said. Watching those encounters left her "weeping like a Mother’s Day commercial," she said.
Hammond talks like a true believer when discussing Art in the Park, leaning into the word "magical." She walks up to the edge of excusing the word, then underlines it again.
There is magic in watching people commune under an open-air canopy; magic in selecting an inheritance — in the form of a handmade pot or mug — for your family or someone else's; magic in CAL living out its purpose through "a vehicle by which we feel delight."
"We are doing our mission. This is important. It is magical. And that is good," Hammond said. "And it’s OK to feel sort of vulnerable in that inspirational feeling."
Handmade magic abounds at Art in the Park, arriving in various forms. Visitors to the park might come across exquisite but functional ceramics, a wood bowl bearing the Earth's ancient witness, jewelry to adorn their own natural beauty.
The festival also features remarkable painters — some recreating their realistic impressions of nature, others favoring abstraction.
And Columbians can see corners of the creative world converge, meeting artists from across the Midwest and their own neighborhoods. Among a sizable local showing this year are painters such as John Fennell and Cristina Nunez, master woodworkers like Ernest Hilderbrand, wizard of small sculptures Katie Barnes, and so many more.
Art, by and for every generation
CAL's mission — to nurture artists of all ages, experiences and stations of life — lives, breathes and shows off its inventions at Art in the Park.
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This mission is evident throughout the park, but especially under tents bearing names such as the Maker's Market and enfolding "rising" and military veteran artists.
The Maker's Market provides a "template," Hammond said, for coming into one's own as an artist. She has long believed it's a "radical act" to make your own work, and this space shelters artists embracing that reality. A handful of 2022 Maker's Market artists have individual booths this year, Hammond said. CAL staff and volunteers want them to see what's possible, to take one platform at a time and feel successful there before moving up and on.
"We’re really trying to make sure the artists are the heroes of our story. And if that is not felt for some reason, we made a misstep," Hammond said.
Under one vinyl roof live the festival's rising artists — typically high school or undergraduate creators — and veterans. This plot of common ground, shared by multiple generations with quite different experiences, also testifies to CAL's mission of helping us see one another through our art; of recognizing our distinct identities and life stories.
Creativity, great and small
Hammond relishes a particular bit of visual dissonance that resolves itself into harmony at each Art in the Park.
Patrons might be handling something relatively small, a bowl or set of earrings, then look out into the festival's greater art installations and feel every bit of the range in creative scope.
Among this year's installations: thoughtful topiaries and touchable sculptures, yarn-based art, portals formed from Missouri flora and ephemera fashioned from recycled True/False Film Fest T-shirts. Subtle visual gestures will meet pieces with more immediate impact, Hammond said.
These more obvious markers, the literal art in the park, drives home a value that is CAL's, Hammond's and no doubt belongs to more than a few participating artists: to invite people into something.
The art world still maintains too many barriers, real and perceived — which become real.
"Any moment where someone has to question ‘Can I?’ is a barrier," Hammond said.
Barriers might never be fully done away with but bringing art into a known public space, one where people already feel at home, initiates a process of reducing their effect.
"There’s no doorway. There’s no price to go," Hammond said. "... That seems really simple, but it’s a space where people already go on weekends. ... You can go to that space because it’s always open."
Seizing on that openness, and filling the park with reminders of our humanity, conjures up another sort of quiet magic. It's the magic of gently nudging someone toward art, then watching them inch closer and closer for the rest of their lives.
"I want people to experience art wherever they are," Hammond said. "And I believe living in a creative community makes you want to stay in that community."
Art in the Park takes place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, June 3 and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, June 4. Admission is free. Visit https://columbiaartleague.org/artinthepark/home for more details.
Aarik Danielsen is the features and culture editor for the Tribune. Contact him at adanielsen@columbiatribune.com or by calling 573-815-1731.
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Magic is undeniable at Art in the Park, a Columbia summer tradition
