Morning News Article - August 28, 2005: Art Fans Enjoy Festival

Art Fans Enjoy Festival

By Steve Caraway
The Morning News, August 28, 2005

FAYETTEVILLE — Seven-year-old Bailey Bass had only one comment Saturday to describe the expanded Fayetteville Arts Festival.

“It’s fun.”

Bailey Bass and her mother, Kimberlea Bass, were participating in “ARTabout,” an event where the audience creates artworks. ARTabout was one of many events at the weeklong festival which welcomed film, theater, dance, poetry and music to more traditional fine arts like painting, drawing and sculpture.

Children at ARTabout, led by artist Alice Guffey-Miller, were decorating banner-style puppets for display at the Nadine Baum Studios. Guffey-Miller said she has been leading projects for community-involvement sculptures for about 20 years.

“I want to energize the public into having fun making art,” Guffey-Miller said.

Guffey-Miller and her husband Mars Hall, who live in Monticello, stretched out the fun by helping to pull children around the parking lot in the ARTabout cart. The cart, made of a tractor tire on its side, was decorated with banners and flags. A basset hound named Otis enjoyed the ride so much he had to be coaxed out.

Daniel Scarbrough said his daughters Maggie, 4, and Olivia, 6, were making dance sticks, decorated with colored tape and ribbons on each end. Olivia danced around, spinning the stick like a baton.

“We just came from the Dance Coalition,” said Daniel Scarbrough, of Fayetteville. “They really enjoyed that.”

The coalition dancers were scheduled to perform three times Saturday. The girls also enjoyed the Big Smith family concert, which had two concerts Saturday.

Olivia and Maggie drew flowers on a puppet, with Bailey Bass adding a cat. The puppets were scheduled to be set up on display along West Street, by Baum Studios.

Other events at Baum included the Summer Sculpture dedication, the Community Portrait Project by photographer Don House and the artist-in-resident program, where onlookers can see the creative progress of working artists.

Other events included a short film festival, fine art booths and a series of concerts on the main stage.

The night was scheduled to finish with a professional exhibition of ballroom dancing and a “poetry slam” invitational. The festival wraps up today with more music, a play festival and the final day of the booths.