Columbus, Ohio: Arts Festival kicks off today

Columbus, Ohio: Arts Festival kicks off today
The three-day Columbus Arts Festival will kick off its 50th anniversary event at 11:30 today and run through 6 p.m. Sunday.

As many as 400,000 people attend the festival annually, which will be in the Discovery District again this year as construction wraps up on the Scioto Mile. It will move back to the area along the river next year.

The Columbus Arts Festival has long been a showcase of fine artists from throughout the country, a competitive juried show in which only 20 percent of the applicants are accepted.

This year, the festival boasts an inclusive atmosphere: A recent art-school graduate can sell work, a central Ohio painter can produce a "freestyle mural" in front of a crowd, and the city's independent arts groups can offer their spin on traditional carnival games.

As the festival turns 50, it's becoming a more interactive, collaborative effort involving artists, organizations and restaurants that reflect the city's spirit.

"We didn't want to just celebrate the 50th anniversary; we wanted to broaden the appeal of the festival to the local community," said Jami Goldstein, spokeswoman for the Greater Columbus Arts Council, which produces the event.

"When people walk around the festival this year, they'll feel that something is different."

As many as 400,000 people attend the three-day festival, which began in 1961 on the Statehouse lawn by a neighborhood group seeking to add events Downtown.

It eventually expanded to the riverfront, where it remained until Scioto Mile construction forced its move to the Discovery District in 2008.

As the festival prepares to move back to the river next year, the council thought it was time to launch new initiatives that can carry the event into the future.

For the first time, extra booth space has been allotted to 10 "emerging artists" from central Ohio who will sell their works alongside festival veterans.

Among the local artists is Chelstin Ross, a 2009 graduate of the Columbus College of Art & Design who otherwise wouldn't have considered applying to the festival.

The 24-year-old, who paints abstract watercolor landscapes inspired by her childhood in rural Bucyrus, has previously participated only in school events. .

But the arts council is charging her a reduced booth fee, hosting boot camps to help with her preparation and pairing her with a mentor who can provide guidance.

"It's opportunities like this that make an artist community grow," said Ross, who lives in Olde Towne East. "At some point, I definitely want to walk around and feel how honored I am to be there."

Other central Ohio artists not selling their work at the festival will have a chance to participate, too.

In "Expose Yourself" - a series of live, 45-minute demonstrations each afternoon and evening - Downtown resident Emily Rickard, 22, will create a multilayered collage by asking audience members to select her materials - including fabric swatches, paper scraps and candy wrappers.

Jon Stommel, 26, of the King-Lincoln District, will stand in front of a blank canvas, turn on a playlist of music and see what happens.

Stommel has painted in public before and looks forward to interacting with the crowd while creating what he calls a "freestyle mural."

"I really just got addicted to the cycle of energy between painter and viewer when the process is so immediate," he said. "This opportunity is very much what I've been waiting for for a long time."

Festival visitors will have a chance to create in the new All Hands on Art tent, a grown-up activity area where nostalgic adults can play with a Lite-Brite or Play-Doh (while enjoying drinks from a nearby bar).

Carnival games can be played for a fee, which will benefit the 10 independent arts groups that created them. The Columbus Idea Foundry, for example, constructed an oversize pinball machine; the Phoenix Rising Print Cooperative will ask participants to fish for greeting cards instead of the traditional plastic ducks.

Groups hope to introduce the festival crowd to what might be an unfamiliar local art scene, said Adam Brouillette of Couchfire Collective and the Wonderland Columbus project, both of which will host games.

"The people who normally go to the Columbus Arts Festival are not the type of people who go to Agora," he said, referring to an independent art show last month.

"I'm hoping this becomes another good communication between the independent arts community and the institutional arts community, and that those teams start working together."