‘Artblast on the Mon’ celebrates 10 years in Greensboro
A girl learns how to use the potters wheel at Art Blast on the Mon in Greensboro last year.
Red Turtle String Snappers playing Americana roots music at Art Blast on the Mon in 2014.
Art has been a labor of love in Greensboro on Labor Day weekend for 10 festive years.
“Artblast on the Mon” will end the summer season once more from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday with a creative mix of live music, fine crafts, hands-on workshops and an exhibit of art done by Greene County kids, all free.
“We have something new to try this year; batik,” Greensboro artist Becky Keck said. “I won’t be selling my ceramics. I’m just going to have fun and do a class – clay pinch pots with a seed in them. Take them home, put them in the ground and watch them sprout.”
The Monon Center is sponsoring a traveling mosaic, which the public can add to, and the festival will have traveling-artist Connie Benline from Monongahela. Her class Saturday will show how to make a concrete birdfeeder or garden paver that people can make and take home.
Most artists demonstrate at their booths to show festivalgoers how it’s done, and many take orders for custom pieces, Keck said. Workshops will be ongoing in papermaking, printmaking, clay and the wax-resist fiber dying art of batik. Jamie Lester, an internationally acclaimed sculptor from West Virginia, will sculpt a clay bust Saturday. West’s sculpture of basketball star Jerry West is on display at West Virginia University.
Homemade soaps and lotions, woodcrafts, pottery, jams, jewelry, pressed flowers, prints, photos and fiber and decorative art are some of the locally made products for sale, along with regional wines and plenty of food, including Corner Star Farm Ice Cream.
Art Blast began as a project of the Nathaneal Greene Community Development Corporation, to help local artists of many mediums increase their sales, plus bring free art workshops in a festival setting to those who might want to try their hand at making something themselves. Creating Art Blast brought the community together and helped breathe new life into the historic, but almost forgotten town of Greensboro. The lure of living on the banks of the Monongahela River in a place once known for its hand-thrown, stoneware pottery can be irresistible – some of those artists and musicians who came to play, demonstrate and market their wares have moved themselves and their families to town, set up studios and are open for business year-round.
The 1923 Davis Theater on First Street will be open all weekend so people can tour the building and see what has been done to get the Greensboro Artists Cooperative set up, said owner Keith McManus. McManus, a fiddle player in the Red Turtle String Snappers, moved to Greensboro six years ago and threw himself into turning the old theater into a place to make art and music. His band, which includes two-time National Banjo Champion Vince Farsetta, will open the festival at noon Sunday for a lively two-hour set of “what we call Americana roots music – country, blues, bluegrass and a little Cajun.”
Saturday features an all-day antique quilt show at the Baptist Church on Water Street, a display of Greensboro Pottery by David Reid and Miss Teacup Face Painting. Music starts at 11 a.m. with the oldies band Vibrations, followed by Eighteen Wheels and a Crowbar and Imu.
Sunday’s music kicks off at noon with Red Turtle String Snappers, then Blended Reality. Artist Taylor Miller will do portrait silhouettes on Sunday afternoon.