How Many People Attend the Fairhope Arts Amd Crafts Festova
Fairhope Arts & Crafts Festival Celebrates 70th Ceremony
This year, about 225 artists from 30 states volition represent 11 unlike media, including the art of watercolor, of jewelry blueprint, of woodwork, and of ceramics.
On a usual day, Fairhope, Alabama, holds about 20,000 people. This "Carmel of the South," sitting on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay, is a charming town with a deep beloved for the arts.
For three days each March, nevertheless, Fairhope packs in an extra 250,000 people.
Typically, when that many people fill a minor town for a weekend, they fill a stadium. Merely here, they make full an arts festival. The Fairhope Arts & Crafts Festival is one of the oldest arts festivals in the country, and this year—its 70th anniversary—will be amid its biggest. The pandemic cancelled its 2019 bear witness and curtailed its 2020 show, so Fairhope has iii years' worth of celebrations to fit into these three days.
Fairhope is a juried festival, and artists from all over the country apply to earn a booth here. This year, about 225 artists from 30 states volition represent 11 different media, including the art of watercolor, of jewelry design, of woodwork, and of ceramics. Visitors can find pieces selling from near $30 to $3,000.
"With the festival having been around for and so long and being choosy with which artists it exhibits, it's go prestigious for the arts community. It attracts visitors, too, because they know they're going to see actually loftier-quality work that they tin can't come across anywhere else," says Marissa Thetford, a Fairhope native and festival promoter.
What makes this festival a stand up-out, however, is a more intangible class of art: the art of Southern hospitality. Beyond the festival grounds, more than 100 downtown boutiques and galleries will welcome visitors with special trade and sales; restaurant tables will spill out onto sidewalks to offering seats to guests. The community even "adopts" visiting artists, inviting them to dinner and bringing them breakfasts, volunteering equally booth sitters, and pulling wagons of drinks through the festival to keep artists refreshed. This is a town that knows a warm welcome is the virtually important artform.
"We believe Southern hospitality is very, very important," says Vicky Cook, chair of the 2022 festival. "All of these touches are really of import. They say a lot about our community, and how much they intendance and appreciate all of the people coming hither to enjoy the crafts and the food."
Information technology's a circular relationship: While the local arts community supports the festival, the festival supports the local arts customs. Festival proceeds foster the artists of tomorrow, supporting arts teaching for school children, theater groups, special needs artists, as well as scholarships for high school students. Local children even have an exhibit here, likewise. For the past 70 years, the arts hither have grown in tandem with the festival, and at present, art is but engrained in life in Fairhope.
"Growing up, I had the opportunity to try every kind of arts and crafts activity that I wanted to. Information technology was common to want to do i kind of art or another," says Cook. "I was very hands-on [with art] growing up because I saw anybody else in our community being very easily-on."
The result is a town of people who create art, who appreciate art, or—like Cook—who collect art. For these iii days, the unabridged town comes together to share that love with others. Visitors tin return home with a new painting, a unique slice of jewelry, or the current trend, an outdoor sculpture.
Some people, nevertheless, discover the ultimate souvenir: a new hometown. Fairhope'south Southern hospitality may be a piddling too effective. It's not rare for a new Fairhope resident to exist concluding twelvemonth's festival attendee.
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"That's like every fourth dimension I meet someone new!" Thetford laughs. "They'll say they came into Fairhope, shopped, enjoyed life on the bay, and and so decided, 'Oh, nosotros should move there!'"
Source: https://www.southernliving.com/travel/alabama/fairhope-arts-crafts-festival-70th-anniversary