‘ART SPRINGS’
10-day Arts & The Park festival wraps up today
Artists and enthusiasts packed Hill Wheatley Plaza Saturday for Art Springs to round out the 10-day Arts & The Park event hosted by the Hot Springs Area Cultural Alliance.
Art Springs is free to the public and continues today from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
According to the executive director of the Cultural Alliance, Mary Zunick, the week of events has been a great success, bookended by two outdoor events that were accented by cool,
sunny weather.
“We were worried yesterday when the weather was a little cloudy but Gallery Walk, I talked to some gallery owners and there were big crowds out,” Zunick said Saturday. “Whittington Gallery said there were people standing in line to get in the gallery at 4 p.m. and they were busy until Gallery Walk ended at 9 p.m. They were ringing people up constantly so you know as our T-shirt says this year ‘Buy more art.’ That’s what they were doing and that’s what we want to do — to support our arts community.”
In partnership with the Garland County Library, she said, Arts & The Park increased the number of children’s events this year with a focus on literature.
“Our children’s area this year has all had a literary focus so (Art Springs) is our second event,” she said. “We did Hollywood Park earlier in the week and this one where all of the children who visit get to take a book home with them. It’s amazing how many kids don’t have a big library of books at home, so we want to do what we can to support learning. Preschool all the way through junior high or even high school books.”
This is the first year, Zunick said, that Art Springs has featured a youth artist. Lakeside 12th-grader Rayshaun McNary had his work on display at the center of the festivities.
“All of the artists will still be here tomorrow and the quality of the artists, I’m so impressed with the folks who have come out here for it,” he said. “This is the first year we’ve had a youth artist who we at the Cultural Alliance reached out to — Rayshaun McNary. One of our board members partnered with him and helped him get his booth all set up, and it just helps reinforce his confidence. Obviously, he’s a very talented artist, but to be able to set up and do his own booth at an art festival just helps provide him tools to be a more successful artist.”
McNary is a student on National Park Technology Center’s advertising and graphic design program, and he said he creates his artwork digitally on an iPad.
“I started out two years ago and my first art show was in August of last year,” he said. “After that, it really shot everything off. I’ve been getting doors opened ever since.
“This is my first Arts and the Park and it’s been really fun and cool. I’ve got to meet a lot of different artists, Mr. (Anthony) Tidwell is kind of like my mentor. And so it’s really fun doing this.”
After graduation McNary said he plans to get his degree in graphic design at National Park College. Patrons of Art Springs, he said, had some excellent questions about his artwork and have shown him overwhelming support.
“They can’t believe that I’m only 17 and that tells people that they can do anything at any age,” he said. “It’s been really inspirational that I can see all this artwork and all these different people doing different types of art. When they tell me what they can do, my mind was blown.”
According to his mother, Mechele McNary, her son’s artwork will be on display at The Avenue restaurant at The Waters Hotel for the month of August.
Zunick said in between this year’s two big weekend events, Arts & The Park featured several workshops for the community to learn about the local arts community and learn from area artists.
“One thing we really tried to do this year is we had our two bookend events,” she said. “Launch party overall and studio tours on the one end of the week and then the art festival on the other end of the week. In the middle, we want to draw artists and support our local arts community by doing workshops in the middle of the week.
“One of our featured artists Gary Simmons did a drawing workshop that sold out and we had to add more space to that even. So that’s how we kind of filled up the middle with different community partner events. Attendance has been good at those. We did plein-air painting — a children’s event and an adult event for that. … The theme of that was taking art to nature and then you can see from that how the nature is reflected into the artwork.”
Next year, she said, the Cultural Alliance is in talks about switching the weekend events and kicking off Arts & The Park with the outdoor festival weekend.
“We’re going to open with the arts festival the first weekend and do the launch party down under the tent, and have that first weekend be the outdoor arts festival,” she said. “Then the second weekend will be studio tours. The reason we’re doing that is because this is (Kentucky) Derby Weekend. There’s some other events and festivals going on across the state, so this will kind of provide something for that last weekend in April, and why compete? We want to have great attendance at all (events).”
The focus will continue to be on exposing children to the arts, she said.
“It’s a free festival and we want to expose children to art from an early age,” Zunick said. “Whether it’s literature or to be able to create their own art, and to see artists. That’s one way we can get kids down here, providing kids events and the opportunity to create their own art.”