DECORATIVE FUN
Annual Ballston Spa Birdhouse Festival a hit for community
Community members have been hard at work the past couple of months painting and decorating birdhouses in anticipation of the 5th Annual Ballston Spa Birdhouse Festival in Wiswall Park and on Front Street.
More than 1,000 unique birdhouses were created by community members of all different ages, some of whom live as far away as Vermont. These spectacular creations will remain on display within the retail district throughout the entire summer and 60 of them were bestowed special awards from Mayor Frank Rossi, II.
The family-friendly event featured games, a children’s raffle, and arts and crafts like hat painting, sand art, and necklace making. Children could also play on a bouncy house, pet bunnies at Hop on Home’s display table, or check out the Ballston Spa Fire Department’s brand new Heavy Rescue Fire Truck and the Department of Public Works’ newly purchased equipment.
If they were feeling inspired — as per courtesy of Curtis Lumber, who donated all of the birdhouses to community members, children and their families had the opportunity to build their own birdhouses that they could take home to decorate.
Visitors could also enjoy the sounds of live music and watch a karate routine put on by Eight Star Martial Arts while enjoying delicious barbecue chicken and pulled pork provided by Miller’s BBQ. Several vendors from the area attended the event and had display tables set up all across Front Street.
Event organizer Mark Blech, who started the program five years ago noted how this program started with “(only) 75 birdhouses. I was just doing a little project, and now it’s just blowing up.”
Blech has worked alongside Curtis Lumber, the Alfred Z. Solomon Charitable Trust, Saratoga County, the Village of Ballston Spa, the Town of Milton, and the New York Army National Guard. Blech says he and his partners also “work with the schools and organizations like Saratoga Bridges that dec
orated a lot of them.”
Blech highlighted the importance of creativity, noting “(how) creativity is a way to express yourself, and working with your hands is another way to express yourself.”
“We want to give people an opportunity to have a full breath of opportunity, especially children, to grow and experience things they wouldn’t normally experience.” Blech states, “We want to create a community, and that means we need to talk and listen, be creative, and find common ground. That’s what this event is really about.”
Blech emphasized how this event has helped to create a better sense of community by bringing people closer together.
His favorite aspect of the event is “watching the community come together in a positive way. Seeing the culmination of everyone’s hard work is amazing. Everyone just really goes above and beyond.” Blech credited the success of the event to the community’s teamwork, saying “(how) everyone work(ed) together, no one person [was] making artwork alone.
“We just give (the community members) the tools as in the ability to do it. It’s a real feeling of community that the arts can create.”
To Blech, what makes this event especially unique is how it gives people the opportunity to express themselves creatively.
“Every person, we just give them the tools and we give everyone the ability to express themselves and that’s why it means so much to me,” Blech noted. What excites Blech is how so many were able to create art in a way that they had never done before.
“People that have never painted before have learned to paint because it was an accessible format. That’s what excites me,” he said.
Assemblywoman Mary Beth Walsh (R,C-Ballston) said “this is an event that I’m really happy to support every year. I can’t say enough about Mark and all of our sponsors that have been helping out, they do a fantastic job.”
Rossi noted at the festival that the winning birdhouses “will be placed on the Tedisco trail [so] make sure to look for them up there. That’s a special place for them because realistically the birds will visit that area the most and will get the most use of them up there.”
The ongoing display of these birdhouses will give community members the opportunity to check out these wonderful birdhouses again and again.