In its 21st year, the Moab Arts Festival hosts an impressive celebration of creativity.
“There’s the typical eclectic variety from simple jewelery to big furniture pieces and everything in between,” said Rex Holman, who founded the Moab Arts Festival with Teresa King. “There are more exotic things to make things out of than you can imagine.”
He said that that there are more new artists this year than they’ve had in the last five years.
“It’s not the same old festival,” Holman said. “Thirty-five artists will be here who have never been here before.”
He said that in addition to Moab-area artists, more are coming from states farther away such as Texas and Washington.
There will be photography, paintings, pottery, textiles, crafts, glassware, jewelry, magic, music and theater.
Festival organizers estimate that between four and six thousand visitors walk through the park and enjoy the festival.
Suzan Woodward of Woodward Dalton Pottery will be sharing her work.
Woodward’s introduction to pottery was taking Dottie Swasey’s class while attending Grand County High School.
“My life has revolved around making pottery for about 38 years,” Woodward said.
Her pottery is high-fired and is safe to use for food and in the microwave, oven or dishwasher.
Grassroots Shakespeare will return this year with “Taming of the Shrew” on Saturday. The group, which has been working together since 2009, work collaboratively to create a day of “theatre in the park.”
“They’ve built this fancy stage. It’s quite a performance,” Holman said. “I was enthralled last year.”
This will be Rick Boretti’s eleventh year to spark a little magic at the festival. He is the magician at the Moab Dog and Pony Show and often shares his skills of illusion at Moab restaurants.
WabiSabi will be working with several Moab-area organizations that serve children to provide the Kids’ Tent.
Moab Arts and Recreation Center (MARC), which hosts Messy Mondays and Arty Farty Art Camp in the summer, will host sessions making yarn jewelery on Saturday and creative crafts on Sunday.
Many of the crafts – such as butterfly mobiles, t-shirt beach bags and record art – use recyclable items to make new art.
“WabiSabi supports re-lots-of-things! Reduce, reuse, restyle, re-imagine, remake, rework, re-create! We carry this ethic into our Kid’s Art Tent at the Moab Arts Festival,” said Mandy Turner, program director for WabiSabi. “Every project uses at least one item that would be considered trash or headed for recycling.”
Some of the salvaged art supplies include pantyhose, plastic bottles, paper towel rolls, warped and scratched vinyl records and water damaged books.
”Almost everything used at the Art Tent has been donated to WabiSabi, except the occasional dye or bit of paint,” Turner said.
Keeping that recycling theme alive, WabiSabi will have a recyclables Bingo game complete with prizes at 7 p.m. Saturday, and at 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. on Sunday.
A wide variety of food will also be available with vendors that provide sweet drinks and snacks to full meals, including hot dogs and barbecue.
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