Music and Art Festival

Oh my, I am so glad the music and art festival is over; however, it was a great event overall.  The day of the festival, I was there at 6:15 am, spent the morning walking up and down the two blocks, making sure everything was up and running – bouncy house, mural wall, stage/bands – only 2 vendors (of the 27) didn’t show up.  I was glad Ron showed up this past week to help; we met Ron in 2010/11 when we had been going to the Grants Pass Gospel Mission every month to preach.    We got to know him a lot more when we invited him to our house (along with some others) for the week of Christmas in ’11 then even more so over the summer of 2012 when we were living in a tent (4 ½ months) at Sunny Valley.  He had been in contact with us recently, so he came out to visit.  So, I put Ron in as ‘stage manager’ to make sure the 10 bands would get on/off stage on time – only 1 single act didn’t show up and that worked out great,  because he was scheduled for the morning and we were already running behind!  So, him not showing up kept us on track and we finished at 5 with all the bands getting their time in.  The stage manager we had hired from Quality Sound said it was one of the best run festivals he had ever been to!  That made my day, since I had never put together a whole festival before.

The week leading up to the festival was so hectic and crazy, I even officially ‘closed’ my shop, but that didn’t keep the kids out!  They come by staring in the windows, see that I’m here and come on in anyway!  I had to frame all the kid’s artwork from my place (about 20 pieces) – I was really hoping the local schools would participate since I sent letters out a couple months ago asking for them to announce it to the kids.  I then had to hang it in the library, then go pick up the kids’ artwork from Renee at the ‘Rainbow of Friends pre-school’ and put it up at the city hall, get the wood for the mural wall, finalize everything for the festival – lots of paperwork, phone calls.  We got some pre-paid phones last week to do all this, our regular phones were shut off due to lack of payment – I don’t know when or if we’ll get those going again.  Anyway, a very busy week.

We even made ‘The Gazette’ – the Colorado Springs paper on Friday the 27^th – from what long-timers from this city said, that was the first time Fountain’s events ever made the CS paper!  That’s cool.  Last week a young reporter from that paper came out to interview me and he put together a pretty good article.  He featured a picture of “The Judges”, one of the bands that came out – in fact, they were one of the best bands of the day, consisting of kids ranging from 9 to 17.  I was very impressed – they were awesome.   In fact, most of the bands were great.   Two of the local kids even got up and sang/danced to “Every Move I make” – what’s so cool is that William had started off the event by praying over it at 9 am from the stage and these kids get up to sing a song about Jesus, not once, but twice throughout the day!  The main thing I was disappointed in was that I had contacted over 2 dozen artists and they had said they would come out, set up easels and paint – none showed.   Here’s the article:

The streets of downtown Fountain will be filled with food, fun and art Saturday at the first Fountain Music & Art Festival.

The festival was added to Fountain’s yearly events after artist and educator Roberta Hayes moved to Fountain from Ashland, Ore., in August and saw a need for more entertainment.

“The whole point of adding a music and art festival was to try and draw more attention to Fountain’s downtown,” Hayes said.  “We have all these festivals now at different times of the year to draw people down here.”

Hayes opened God’s House of Vision, an evangelic ministry and art studio, in September with the goal of building a stronger art community in Fountain.  Ten months later, after joining the Fountain Downtown Events Association, she’s doing just that.

Hayes says that since she moved to Fountain, she hasn’t seen much of an art community.  She believes that the best thing to do for the residents of Fountain is to provide them with more art and music.

Ohio Street and Main Street will be closed around City Hall for the day to make space for the variety of attractions.  Local bands including Black Roads Horizons and Judges Generation will perform on the main stage across from City Hall on Ohio Street from 9:15 am to 5 pm and around 30 food, craft and entertainment vendors will line the sidewalks.

“I want this to be a community event,” Hayes said.  “And there’s going to be a lot of variety.  I want this to be a first annual and I wanted it to be big so that there will be encouragement to keep it going.”

In addition to the music and vendors, Hayes is expecting over a dozen local artists to paint original pieces on City Hall’s front lawn.

“I’m trying to get attention to artists here,” Hayes said.  “I’m trying to get people to see what these guys are doing.  To watch what artists can do right in front of you.” – Rick Cookson