Technically, the Youth Arts Village at this weekend’s Black Swamp Arts Festival is what it implies: A platform for kids to be creative.
But what’s age when you’re dealing with art? Just a number.
What: The 27th annual Black Swamp Arts Festival
When: Friday, 5 p.m. to midnight (food, festival merchandise, beer garden, live music); Saturday, 10 a.m. to midnight (includes chalk walk from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., art shows from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., youth arts from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., artists @ work from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.); Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. (includes art shows, youth arts, artists @ work).
Where: Downtown Bowling Green along Main Street, near Wooster, Clough and Court streets.
Admission: Free
Shuttles: Offered every 30 minutes from BGSU Lot 24, Wood County Fairgrounds, and Meijer parking lot. $2 per ride.
Information: blackswampfest.org
“We definitely have people of, quite literally, all ages. It says Youth Arts Village but I would never turn anyone away who wants to do an art project. You can be 50, 65, and I would say come make a hat, make a robot, it will be fun,” said Katie Steiner, chair of the youth section at the downtown Bowling Green festival.
Steiner is in charge of helping our community’s youngest members dive into nine different artistic projects at the block-long activities tent. It’s just one part of Black Swamp Arts Festival, in its 27th year and essentially a household name in Northwest Ohio. The volunteer-run, three-day community festival offers three art shows with more than 150 artists who display and sell their art, three days of live musical entertainment, a beer garden, food and merchandise sales.
“Our mission is to connect the community and the arts, and promote a love of the arts for people of all ages in our community,” said Bill Donnelly, chairman of the festival. “It’s an incredible celebration of arts and music for a couple of days.”
The Black Swamp Arts Festival is a nonprofit that runs on sponsorships, grants, donations and the assistance of between 800 and 1,000 volunteers every year. Much of its revenues to help with its estimated $195,000 budget comes from artist booth rentals and concessions.
The event kicks off Friday night with live music on the main stage, including the sounds of singer Samantha Fish and The War and Treaty. A beer garden, more than a dozen food booths, and plenty of merchandise round out the event.
On Saturday and Sunday, live music is offered throughout the day and evening on three different stages along the festival route.
The artistic meat of the festival also occurs on Saturday and Sunday, with artists who work in a dozen different mediums lined up along Main Street, live artist demos throughout both days, and the Youth Arts Village, which offers kids (and adult kids) the opportunity to participate in take-home projects such as making robots out of recyclable material, melting down old crayons to create new crayons with new colors and shapes, and creating decorations for their own customized sun hat, that Steiner says has become a tradition for festival-goers to make and collect over the years.
This year, Steiner — who sticks to the reuse and recycle mantra when creating art — also added two community projects: weaving mats out of old T-shirts using hula hoops, and using construction fencing as a loom in a large weaving project of repurposed T-shirts.
“I can’t speak for the arts community [as a whole], but I think that being creative and being good at art are maybe not necessarily the same thing. I think people who think they are bad at art just haven’t found their thing yet, which is why I love having a variety of things at the festival,” she said. “There is something for everyone.”
Donnelly said sometimes visitors to the event don’t know the youth arts program exists at the festival until they get there, and the program helps the kids connect with the rest of the festival that they experience with the adults who brought them.
“They feel more connected walking up and down along the artist booths and can look inside the booths and say ‘oh look, that’s kind of what we did today,’” he said.
The festival committee also works with local high schools to organize two competitions on Saturday. About 20 teams will create their submitted designs on the walks during Chalk Walk to compete for monetary awards for their school’s art department, Donnelly said. This is the first year for Beats on the Streets, a high school a cappella contest in which local ensemble groups compete to earn money for their school's music department.
Donnelly said the many facets of the event come together through the work of tireless volunteers who do everything from artist hospitality to setup and teardown.
If you’re a Black Swamp groupie, you might remember that last year was somewhat of a wash — literally — when rainy weather pounded the area. The weather forced organizers to close the artist portion of the festival Sunday, but most of the musicians moved inside and performed for crowds anyway, Donnelly said.
This year’s forecast looks more promising. According to the National Weather Service, Cleveland, skies look clear and sunny, and temperatures are expected to hover in the 70s all three days, and the high 50s at night.
First Published September 5, 2019, 10:53 p.m.
