Festival to exhibit arts, crafts

Every year, returning students and incoming freshmen shop for furniture, rugs and items for decorating their apartments and dorm rooms. One place to start this decorative search is the 24th-annual Fourth Street Festival of the Arts and Crafts.\nThe free festival takes place from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday . The information booth will be centrally located at the intersection of Fourth and Grant streets. With about 100 different booths, many different mediums will be represented: clay pottery, jewelry, photography, painting, woodwork, metal work, basketry, leather, sculpture, print making, drawing, glass work, paper, fiber and mixed media.\nLorraine Farrell, a jeweler who has exhibited in the past and the current president of the Fourth Street Festival Committee, put the festival in context.\n"It's important to make a distinction between an open festival and a juried festival," she said. \nFarrell explained that not just anyone can exhibit their wares. Only the best can come and the very best are given awards. The festival's first, second and third place prizes are awarded by a six-juror committee with confidential ballots. George Zajicek, past president of the Fourth Street Festival Committee, added that the jury is "six different people every year."\nGetting six new artists a year is not hard, he said, considering the festival was created by artists and is artist-centered. \n"Our goal is to provide an outdoor art show of high quality that will be mutually beneficial to both the exhibitors and the community," Farrell said. \nBoth Farrell and Zajicek noted the festival is rated as one of the top festivals by Sunshine Artists Magazine.\nAlthough it is very artist-centered and not strictly commercial, Zajicek said to be forewarned is to be forearmed. If one goes, be prepared for a crowd. The very high quality of the festival, he said, has traditionally pulled in huge crowds. Farrell estimated that it will have 30,000 visitors in two days. Zajicek said in 1995, police estimated the crowd size to be 25,000. And it has only gotten bigger. Local musicians, actors, jugglers and other groups will be performing in designated areas complete with seats for spectators.\n"We'll even have belly dancers and barbershop quartets." Farrell said.\nIt is this mix of art, craft and entertainment that Zajicek said makes the festival so successful. \nFarrell, Zajicek and Conway all have slightly different approaches to their art, but they are all conscious of the history and future of the festival. \n"It started as a very small fair, but always with the idea of excellence," Conway said. \nFarrell stressed that its very integrity is what has made it so popular with the people of Bloomington, year after year. \n"It's remained at a grass roots level since 1976," she said. \n"The show is one the greatest in the country for both the patron and participating artist," Zajicek said. "Don't miss it, because it's great"