Fired up for the festival
51st Annual Festival of the Arts begins
For 15 years, Andy Boatman has literally been playing with fire for fun and art.
“There’s something about it that’s kind of primal, I guess. People who are attracted to it are just attracted to it,” said Boatman, the owner of Blue Sage Studios. “Most of the people that take an interest in it have that interest in the fire and are captivated by it.”
For the third year, the glassblower will share his fiery art form with thousands of schoolchildren, families, office workers and other attendees of the downtown Festival of the Arts.
“Every 30 minutes, we’ll make a little piece and talk about what we’re doing and what we’re making and how
it’s done,” he said. “Some of them just are mesmerized by the watching it and the movement. It’s a really neat process to see them kind of become entranced, ask questions, and then they start thinking about how things are done and made. Some of the kids have watched us there, and they come in and bring their parents into the studio to watch us work because they just are so interested in it.”
Boatman and several other Blue Sage artists will work in shifts to keep the popular glassblowing demonstrations going at the top and bottom of every hour throughout the six-day event, which begins Tuesday.
“There seems to be a resurgence of American craft. Wood has become very popular again and glass and metal work. People are kind of returning to some of the old crafts that we got away from for quite a while. This is kind of part of that resurgence also, I think,” he said.
Over the next six days, the 51st Annual Festival of the Arts will bring in about 200 visual artists from across Oklahoma and the country, along with about 300 Sooner State entertainers staging a wide range of live performances and more than 30 food vendors cooking up tastes from around the world.
Settling into a new spot
The venerable “rite of spring” will take place rain or shine from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. April 30 at Bicentennial Park between the Civic Center and City Hall, Colcord and Couch drives, and the City Hall lawn.
Last year, the Festival of the Arts marked its 50th anniversary by moving back to its original home in Bicentennial Park, ending a 30-year run in and around the Myriad Botanical Gardens, Hudson Avenue and the old Festival Plaza. As the 2017 edition of the festival launches this week, organizers are working to make it more at home in Bicentennial Park.
“Really, the way that it was set up last year — except for a couple of bottlenecks here and there — it was smooth,” said Peter Dolese, executive director of Arts Council Oklahoma City, which organizes the yearly festival. “The area is fantastic. Being bookended by those two fantastic art deco buildings — City Hall at one end and the Civic Center on the other — is just awesome. It’s a wonderful frame for the event.”
Festival Co-Chairman Steve Bolton said steps have been taken to alleviate a few spots where organizers noticed logjams, especially around the dual food rows.
“We noticed a couple of different bottlenecks where traffic wasn’t being able to flow very well up into the food courts. So the arts council has taken some steps to rectify that by changing some tent sizes. We’re going to get an extra 10 foot on each side on each entrance for the food courts,” Bolton said.
In addition to planned improvements like more tables and chairs and a bigger space for the children’s Creation Station, organizers have mixed in new menu items, visual and performing artists and culinary arts demonstrators into the extensive lineup of festival favorites.
“It’s such a great way to start incorporating art into your everyday life,” said Arts Council OKC Communications Director Lindsey Pendleton. “I think growing up, you’re often just exposed to it in museums and settings where it’s like this really rarefied thing. And art is special and it is precious, but it’s nice to able to introduce kids to the idea that you can have art in your life and in your home.”
Playing with fire
Among the 144 visual artists’ booths circling Bicentennial Park during the festival are some of the top glass artists in the country who have made the pilgrimage to Oklahoma City to show and sell their wares.
“They have a very wellrespected group of folks that come … and there’s a really nice dialogue back and forth on how to do this and create,” Boatman said.
“You kind of get used to (people saying) ‘Well, they have that at Hobby Lobby,’ but it’s a lot larger process and it takes a lot more skill than you would anticipate. … It’s years of practice before you’re good. And a lot of the people that come here downtown are really some of the best glass people in the nation.”
For the local glassblower, the chance to show his artwork to thousands people — especially children — keeps him hauling his mobile furnace back to the Festival of the Arts. In addition to owning Blue Sage Studios and creating glass art, Boatman teaches computers at Edmond’s Sequoyah Middle School. He generally comes to the glassblowing booth on Couch Drive every day after school and works the evening shift at the festival.
“Being able to educate people about glass and how it’s done is kind of a real natural fit, I guess, for what I do in my work life also,” he said, noting that he became interested in glassblowing by watching his aunt, glass artist Connie Christopher, create her work.
“It is a rare thing to be able to kind of get to watch … and being able to take something without form and give it form is just really, really neat. You’re basically working with a glob and being able to transform it into something new and useful or pretty.”