Grand Haven Art Festival draws thousands for 65th annual weekend of art, community
Grand Haven’s Chamber of Commerce was back last weekend with its 65th annual Art Festival, featuring artists from across the country. The yearly festival took place on Washington Avenue on June 26-28, with nearly 80 artists participating.
GRAND HAVEN — Grand Haven’s Chamber of Commerce was back last weekend with its 65th annual Art Festival, featuring artists from across the country.
The yearly festival took place on Washington Avenue on June 26-28, with nearly 80 artists participating.
“Our goal (with this event) is to not only promote and support artists, but to also bring people into our region and support our restaurants and retailers and our hospitality industry,” said Mark Allen, president of the chamber.
Allen told Ottawa News Network that the event was expected to have 40,000-plus attendees, similar to previous years of the festival, which offers a wide variety of art mediums and each artist carefully selected by the festival committee.
One such artist was Julie and Brett Ashba with Oakfish Studios in Grand Rapids. The pair tag-team their work, with Julie cutting and soldering leftover pieces of glass from her work doing glass restoration to make into flower petals. Her husband, Brett, builds wooden planters for the flowers after work.
“It's my full-time job. I've worked with glass for 25 years — it's my passion, I love it,” said Julie.
Lora Garcelon was also at the festival this year with her paintings.
“I self-taught for years, but wasn't getting where I wanted to be, so I took private lessons,” Garcelon explained.
Garcelon said interacting with the community is great, with people asking questions about her work.
“When little dudes come into my booth and ask me questions, I love it. I love teaching kids to take an interest in art,” said Garcelon.
The festival planning commission did have kids in mind when planning the event, with Family Fun Day featured on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The area had local businesses with activities for children.
One such business was Mosaic Counseling, a nonprofit mental health service in Ottawa County.
Stephanie Szymas, director of Strategic Initiatives, was running the booth at the festival.
The booth was designed with mental health in mind, with activities such as a duck pool hunting game, with the colors of the ducks being green and yellow for Mental Health Month.
Along with that, the booth had an emoji board with different Pixar “Inside Out” emotion characters.
Families were encouraged to interact with the board and identify their emotions.
“We tried to make it fun,” said Szymas, “but tied in with mental health and awareness.”
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Residents said they enjoyed the event.
Olivia Henke, 18, of Grand Haven, said it was a “hoot and a holler and I'll definitely be back!”
The Grand Haven Art Festival wrapped up Sunday and organizers say they are already planning for next year.
— Mallory Burt is a reporter for Ottawa News Network. Contact her at newsroom@ottawanewsnetwork.org.
