Arts and Crafts Festival arrives

The Bella Vista Arts and Crafts Festival, which is now in its 48th year, will be put on by the Village Art Club Thursday through Saturday featuring arts, crafts, food and fun.

The festival runs 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day.

Mary Sinkus, the event’s director, said she’s been handling everything to do with the event — advertising for exhibitors, advertising the festival itself to shoppers, keeping a database of exhibitors and keeping those exhibitors informed on the event’s status, working with partners

including the POA, American Legion and Rotary Club, and perhaps most importantly, getting volunteers together.

“The whole festival is run by volunteers,” she said, “and they’ll be working pretty much full time.”

The crew that’s been prepping the site for the event, located along Arkansas Highways 279 and 340, will have spent over two weeks working on it before the event actually starts, she said.

Last year, she said, roughly 300 volunteers put in more than 3,000 hours of labor.

“If you look at all the festivals that go on that weekend.” she said, “we are unique for many reasons.”

For one, she said, the festival offers a shopper rewards program. Some of the vendors, she said, can donate gift certificates or products, which will then

be given out to some shoppers during the festival.

The arts and crafts festival, she said, is one of very few events that is strictly volunteer-run. Additionally, the products are entirely handmade, she said. Money the festival earns is going into a non-profit organization.

“The money is used predominantly for art scholarships,” she said.

There are currently six students benefiting from these scholarships, she said.

Additionally, Sinkus said, there will be a very formidable food court — which she suspects will be the best at any event in the area, and this time the food court is welcoming a handful of food trucks. Of the five new food vendors, she said, four are food trucks.

“Our food court is large and diverse,” she said. “Foods ranging from Asian to Greek to barbecue to vegan and gluten free.”

Sinkus said there will also be more typical fare, like burgers. Cajun cuisine, she said, will also be available, as will tacos.

Troy Walker runs Trick Dilly, a taco truck he and his wife, Rebecca. started in Bentonville in 2014.

Walker said he’s excited for his first time selling food at the Arts and Crafts Festival.

“We do tacos but a different kind of tacos,” he said. “We do some different things. For example we do smoked brisket with pickled watermelon, arugula and queso fresco. We do pulled pork with fresh apple, shaved radish, goat cheese and a light chipotle aioli.”

He’s found it difficult to get into this fair in the past, he said, and he’s hoping his truck does well at the fair.

“We had an opportunity to jump in,” Walker said, “so we’re like ‘yeah, let’s do it.’”