REMEMBER WHEN, ARKANSAS?

Anyone remember what’s going on in this vintage photo from the Democrat-Gazette archives?

Hint: There’s a mall involved.

Jim Glassman of Little Rock, described in handwriting on the back of the original photo as “a true artist,” displayed his Table Legs or Leg Tables on the Metrocenter Mall in downtown Little Rock on May 21, 1981. The occasion was the fourth annual Riverfest.

Begun as a celebration of the arts, the festival rapidly diversified. Most events moved from Murray Park to downtown that year, in part to amplify Little Rock’s 150th anniversary. (The city was incorporated Nov. 7, 1831.) Riverfest did not leave Murray Park over concerns about snakes — as chief organizer Mary Storey informed the Arkansas Democrat after a photo of water snakes appeared in that newspaper over a caption suggesting festival officials were concerned about snake safety.

The Riverfest ’81 canoe and kayak race did not have to wade through snakes to launch from Murray Park.

Most of the events were staged at the Little Rock Convention Center and the Metrocenter Mall. Forty artists set up booths on the city’s outdoor, tile-clad, pedestrians-only mall at Capitol Avenue and Main Street near the Henry Moore sculpture “Large Standing Figure: Knife Edge.”

Glassman told Democrat photographer James Allison that the inspiration for his creations came to him one day as he juggled a telephone while holding a phone book between his legs.

Glassman was a widely known organizer of art exhibitions whose company, Concepts Unlimited, conducted a series of art shows at North Little Rock’s McCain Mall in the 1980s.