The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Art, music, film all being featured
By Mark Reaman
The 51st Crested Butte Arts Festival will kick off this Friday, August 4 at the Crested Butte Community School campus. Gates will open at noon and the festival runs through Sunday afternoon.
There are 120 exhibiting artists slated to take part in the festival and 12 separate mediums will be represented. There will also be three days of live performances featuring local musicians, including a performance by Easy Jim on Saturday. West African dancers and drummers will highlight Friday, while an outdoor movie screening of Moonage Daydream is also scheduled for Friday evening presented by the Crested Butte Film Festival.
Festival executive director Andrew Arell said there will be an art alley craft tent for kids. Various projects will take place for the kids including those centered on fiber arts (make a bracelet), jewelry (use wire and beads to make jewelry), pottery (work with air dry clay) and painting (paint a frisbee, color and create a puzzle or create an abstract painting with squirt guns).
“This year we are really excited about our collaboration with the CB Film Fest,” said Arell. “Screening Moonage Daydream, a David Bowie documentary film, will be a new evening attraction under the stars.
People can bring a camp chair or blanket and get comfortable to watch the film outside the school. All the live entertainment, as well as the film screening, is sited on stage at the high school athletic field. We encourage patrons to bring personal lawn/camping chairs, blankets and shade structures and picnic provisions to enjoy the live entertainment throughout the weekend.”
Arell said some of the profits from the festival will benefit the local community. “Since its inception in 1971, the Crested Butte Arts Festival has maintained a legacy of redistributing festival profits back into the local community. As one of Crested Butte’s earliest cultural entities, the CBAF has contributed seed funding to help launch an array of now well-established CB cultural institutions,” he said. “We carry on this tradition of cultural philanthropy by administering our annual Artistic Enrichment Grant that provides local creatives and arts organizations with direct financial support to actualize personal creative visions and arts outreach programming in the community.”
The festival will run Friday from noon to 7:30 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. There is a $5 per day admission fee or $12 for a weekend pass. There are no presale tickets so just pay when you go.
The main entrance gate is at Red Lady Avenue while a rear entrance will be located at the east side parking lot. You can pay $10 for reserved parking near that rear entrance.
“We kindly request patrons not bring pets into the festival grounds,” added Arell.
With school construction slated for next year the thought is that perhaps the festival will return…to Elk Avenue? We’ll see. Oh, and don’t forget the annual Rubber Duckie Race on Sunday that always happens Arts Fest weekend. It starts at 2 o’clock at First and Sopris and ends at Totem Pole Park.
