Over 10,000 manhours creates a wonderful art festival at Columbus Ohio.

The Columbus Arts Festival is a hugely popular art festival in the largest city of Ohio, Columbus. It’s primarily funded by the Arts Council of Columbus and is an excellent example of how all different elements of a city get together to showcase and actively promote the city’s arts and crafts as well as provide tourist revenue to the city. In return the arts sector creates $ 226 million in revenue and supports 8,500 jobs (2012 data).

The word “Earth” without “art” is just “Eh”! Think about it. This slogan on a T Shirt at the festival caught my eye and made me realise how important art and crafts are to our lives.

 Spread across Main St and Rich St, the festival has over 300 artists’ stalls. The beauty of such festivals is that the artist himself / herself is present at the stall and takes an active interest in the customer, interacting, explaining, introducing the works and hopefully selling a few pieces along the way over the three day event.

 

The art pricing is at various price point levels catering to every single need. The range and type of art is awesome too: stone, leather, feather, canvas, paper, semi precious stones, glass, fibre, leaves, bone, metal etc. 

 











You can find paintings, artefacts, ceramics, 3D mixed media, digital art, photography, printmaking, sculptures, jewellery, and other esoteric art forms which you may have never seen before.

Detail of leaves

 I was amazed to see some interesting work with leaves which had been fossilised and which were as hard as stone. 
















There was a stall selling hundreds of small miniature items like boats, bikes, animals, interesting objects: all made from scrap metal. The attention to detail was what made these objects so fascinating.

 
 The Arts Council also promotes new central Ohio artists. The jury panel chooses ten artists so that they get a chance to exhibit and sell along with the established artists.

Knowing that hundreds of families visit, such an activity needs a few other things too:

• Live performances. There are six stages at the festival arena which alone gives you an idea of the scale and size of the place. There is jazz and blues; acoustic music; dance; theatre; spoken word; and pop. The timings vary but generally are from 11 am going throughout the day right upto around 8.30 pm. 
•  Food. Americans love food and in ample quantities. Whilst the Festival promoted 40+ vendors across the plaza, we could not find more than one restaurant where we could get a proper sit down meal. The waiting time was over one hour! The food available was all fast food: funnel cakes, cream puffs, donuts, soba noodles, pizza, Brazilian street food and such like: all buy, stand and eat! Not very comfortable. So we went off site and ate at Lindeys: a rather good restaurant serving food in the German area.
• Hands on art: ideal for children and adults who wish to learn. Whether it was simple painting or glass bead making or face painting, this was the place for you.
• Local art tent. Here you can walk around find works of art for sale. They also had art technique demonstrations here. You see jewellery/kanji, pottery, lathe and pen turning, marionettes, chain mail and wire sculptures. Groups of artists from across Ohio come for the festival.
• A really wonderful experience is the Children’s Art Gallery. Children below 12 years are invited to this gallery to see works given by local artists. Each piece is priced at $ 5 or below: well within the pocket money levels of any child so that he /she is interested in purchasing the item.
  
• Not to forget the local students! The Council also showcases the 100 works of students from 30 local schools. In the Central Ohio area. A great way to motivate youngsters as well as give them an opportunity to be seen.
• Film. There is a tent where they exhibit films made locally as well as by others.
• Food Can exhibits. They have eight local design teams who will use full food cans and design sculptures. These remain on display for the duration. Then the cans are gifted to the Food bank. Last year they gave away 50,000 cans of food!
• Italian Street painting. I did not get a chance to see it as we were running late but on one of the streets they had artists create temporary art works on the road surface. Done in chalk, it’s an effort to showcase repros of famous artworks. There is a prize for best artist.
• Downtown events. Linked to all this is a series of events downtown which is designed to excite you even more!

What is so wonderful about the Festival is that it’s all handled by volunteers! They are well spoken, helpful and polite. Sometimes they know the answers, sometimes not: but they make an effort to help you solve your problem. Apparently they clock over 10,000 man hours of free time. That is humungous.

The best way to cool off after a long hot day in the sun!

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