Artists from all over Mississippi will showcase their work at Starkville’s ninth annual Cotton District Arts Festival Saturday. Laborers at the free event will set up 60 craft vendors with paintings, woodwork, pottery, photography, jewelry and other types of art beginning at 10 a.m.
“There are no manufactured items in the showcases,” said festival chairman Gloria Bagwell-Rowland. “This is a good chance for people in the community to see the methods of producing art in Mississippi.”
MSU art gallery director Bill Andrews, who was previously president of the Starkville Area Arts Council, is the festival’s producer.
“Art is essentially evidence of the rich history of human culture,” Andrews said. “It can be very serious or quite humorous and has a variety of possible meanings for different people.” Log will display his students’ ceramics pieces as well as his own at one of the booths. They will give demonstrations on the creation of pottery, and some of the items will be for sale.
“The South really has a success in the arts of literature and music,” he said. “But we’re behind in the visual arts, because for rural people, a craft object that you can’t use is somewhat difficult to understand.”
Long said that K-12 public school systems don’t emphasize the importance of art enough.
“Kids come through the college program with no background in art but love to draw, paint and sculpt,” he said. “To exclude one or the other isn’t a complete education. You need both sides of the brain.”
Along with the visual showcases, the Golden Triangle Celts will set up a village for the singers and dancers of Jubilee and the Father of Waters Pipe. The Drum Marching Band will also perform and welcomes anyone to bring an instrument and participate in a jam circle.
From noon to 3 p.m. the International Village will display the dancing choreography of the Philippines, China, Korea and Hawaii.
From 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., Ocean Springs artist Susie Thomas Ranager will judge art at the Juried Art Exhibition held at Bulldog Deli.
Three stages will be set up for local music groups, including Young Agent Jones, Nash Street and The Puerto Rican Rum Drunks.
Director of arts-based community development Beth Batton promotes the arts through the Mississippi Arts Commission-a co-sponsor of the festival. “Art may look different here than it does in New York City,” she said. “Not everyone who creates art here will end up in a gallery, but it’s important within our own lives.”
A new addition to the arts festival-the Information Village-will provide maps of the vendors and sell T-shirts, canvas bags and posters. The village will be located across from Bulldog Deli.
Long said that art is a cultural trait of the human race. “It tells us all we can know about some past cultures,” he said. “And it’s part of ours. No matter what we do, art will be there in some expression.”