The Cotton District Arts Festival is bigger than ever. With 147 artists and 23 food vendors, CDAF committee co-chair Maggie Bjorgum said Saturday the festival grew by 40 percent this year and she expected more than 20,000 to visit the Cotton District before the day was done.
“I think it”s becoming really popular,” said Bjorgum. “That”s more about people approaching us to be a part of it than us soliciting anything.”
Mississippi State University ceramics professor Robert Long couldn”t agree more. As he manned his ceramics booth he reminisced about the first festival more than 10 years ago.
“We had card tables set up on Main Street. Maybe 100 people showed up,” he said. “Now it”s starting to really rival the Double Decker Arts Festival in Oxford and the Gumtree Festival in Tupelo.”
Long has set up shop at CDAF so long that he now sees students who took his ceramics class peddling their own wares. He likes to set up a booth next to his own with pottery wheels that children can use to experiment and play with clay, but there wasn”t room this year due to the number of applicants requesting space in the Cotton District.
Indeed, there were plenty of newcomers this year, both locals and visitors.
Linda Lindale of Amory, aka the Funky Lady, was in town with her 1960s-esque crocheted clothing, which fetched second place in the juried show.
“I”m a product of the ”60s and I”ve seen those fads come back over and over,” she explained. “Then I have a vision like a sculptor or a potter and I work it out with my hooks, which are like my paintbrushes. Yarns are my paints and the ladies who wear my creations are my canvas.”
Lindale is a regular at textile shows in the Birmingham, Ala., area, but was happy to show in her home state.
Amy Moe-Hoffman of Starkville was out Saturday for the first time selling the stuff she made, appropriately titled “Stuff I Made.”
Hoffman is a longtime artist and attendee of CDAF, but friends and family finally talked her into setting up a booth of her own this year.
“It”s pretty eclectic,” she said of her creations. “I”ve focused on my stuffed animals and children”s toys on this table. They”re all designed by me, original works.
“I”ve been making things forever. I have to be doing stuff with my hands. But this is the first time I”ve ever sold my work. I give a lot of things away at baby showers and people just kept after me to start selling it.”
From the other side of the table, Hoffman said CDAF was just as much fun. The music wasn”t too loud and the weather wasn”t too hot.
MSU sculpture students Jon Nowell, of Ridgeland, and Peter Hammond, of Jackson, shared a booth for their first experience at CDAF. Nowell was selling functional sculptures, like benches, made entirely from recycled materials. Hammond was recycling, too, but not materials so much as the art itself.
Hammond is the man responsible for the “Star Wars” stormtrooper graffiti once stenciled on the former Starkville Buses building at the corner of Jackson Street and Lampkin Street.
This time, Hammond”s art was featured legally in the Cotton District. He was selling 5-feet-tall sheets of black paper with the storm trooper stenciled on them as well as prints of the man-in-headphones picture he once stenciled repeatedly on a University Drive bridge.
“Hopefully it will work out good for me,” he said of the publicity surrounding his arrest for malicious mischief. “I accidentally told too many people and, after no time, everyone was like ”Peter did those paintings on the side of the building.””
Despite the $300-plus he and a friend were each forced to pay in fines, Hammond said the experience was “fun, and we learned some life lessons.” He only hopes the city had to pay more than $600 reward for the Crime Stoppers tip which led to his arrest.
Nowell, who wasn”t the student arrested with Hammond, sees his art less as a statement and more as conversation pieces.
“I like to have people come by and talk about art,” he said. “I spend most of my time by myself working on it, so it feels good to have people enjoy what I”m doing as much as I do.”
Jason Browne was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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