Santa Fe College Spring Arts Festival returns this weekend in new location
One of the Gainesville community's largest annual cultural arts events is set to return this weekend in a new location after a three-year hiatus due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Santa Fe College Spring Arts Festival is moving from its traditional downtown Gainesville location to Santa Fe College's Northwest Campus, 3000 NW 83rd St., and will be held Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Santa Fe College art gallery manager and festival co-organizer Kyle Novak said Tuesday that they are "very excited to kind of pick up the legacy of this really important community event."
"We think it's really fitting since the festival started on the campus of the college when it was housed at the Thomas Center to be bringing it kind of home in a sense," he said. "We're really excited to show this new version and new vision of the festival."
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This year's festival features more than 100 artists from across the country, including Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Illinois, Mississippi, New York, Virginia and California. Disciplines on display include 2-D and 3-D mixed media, fiber, ceramics, drawings, glass, jewelry, painting, photography, sculpture and wood.
Paper-cutting artist Dan Bi, who traveled more than 1,300 miles last year from his home in Markham, Ontario, to take part in the state festival circuit, also will take part in this year’s Gainesville event.
Festival-goers also will be treated to live entertainment, local food vendors such as La Ventanita Cubana Food Truck, Elm Thai and Stubbie’s Pop-up Sausages, and specialized kid zones related to art, health and science.
In addition to the juried art show, Santa Fe College also is hosting events this weekend at the Kika Silva Pla Planetarium, the Museum of Earth Sciences, the teaching zoo and the Jackson N. Sasser Fine Arts Hall. Student artwork also will be showcased.
"It gives us an opportunity to highlight some of the things that area really special about our campus," Novak said.
Just three months after the Santa Fe Spring Arts Festival celebrated its 50th anniversary in April 2019, festival producer and curator Raul Villarreal died unexpectedly at age 55.
"Raul was an incredible resource, an amazing artist and a big part of our community. It was kind of hard to come back from that, and of course we went straight from that into COVID," Novak said. "There was definitely a little bit of a hill to climb to get back to being in a position where we felt like we were ready to do and event like this."
With the festival's move west of Interstate 75, the city of Gainesville and RTS, in an effort to make the festival more accessible, will be offering free services this weekend with extended routes from various locations, including Routes 10, 23, 43, 76 and 78.
"That was really important to us," Novak said of the free transportation. "We focused on inclusion and making sure that everybody could get out here and be a part of it.
At the request of local artists, a scaled-down version of the festival was held last year at the the Shoppes at Thornebrook and hosted by Hoggtowne Music owners Joe and Malorie Dorsey
Joe Dorsey said in March 2022 that if and when the Santa Fe Arts Festival returned, he would gladly step aside.
"This is not about me trying to run an art show, this is about me trying to help my friends," he said before last year's festival. "These people are just wonderful. It’s what makes our community great here in Gainesville."
This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Santa Fe College Spring Arts Festival in Gainesville Florida April 2023
