Easter weekend downtown St. George will transform into a vibrant, open-air gallery where thousands of visitors can experience over 150 artist vendors, about 40 performers and roughly 30 food vendors, an Art Attack Race, and Creation Station with activities for children.
The St. George Art Festival, April 3-4, will be at Town Square and is free and open to the public.
Peyton Lee, St. George City’s community arts manager, said: “We are actually adding a literary event this year. The literary arts haven’t been quite represented yet at the festival.” There is going to be a small poetry stage inside City Council chambers and local poets are going to be sharing their work. There will also be a poetry workshop onsite as well.
Lee said an average of 30,000 visitors historically attend festival weekend. To accommodate the large scale, Lee starts planning about six months in advance to book bands and obtain special events permits to close down roads.
“With this year’s headliner, The Aquabats!, I’m expecting a higher attendance,” Lee said. “I’m hoping we can push close to that 50,000 range.” The Aquabats! are a punk rock band from California, recognized for their superhero-inspired costumes.
Entertainment: Headliners and locals
(Courtesy Peyton Lee | City of St. George City) The St. George Art Festival, April 3-4, will feature 150 artist vendors, about 40 performers and roughly 30 food vendors, an Art Attack Race, and Creation Station with activities for children.
Friday night headliner is The Aquabats!, which Lee said is the biggest headliner in the festival’s history. While the band isn’t based in St. George, they have ties to Utah. One of the members, Christian Jacobs, has family in northern Utah, and some of the band’s earliest shows outside of California took place in the state, thanks to connections at Brigham Young University and the University of Utah.
“One of the band’s members, Christian, actually reached out and said, ‘Hey, I’m pretty interested in doing something, connecting with the city somehow, giving back to the city somehow.’ And from that we were like, ‘OK, let’s see what we could do.’ So it came from Christian really having that drive and that initiative to want to participate.”
Saturday night’s headliner is the James Hardy & The Fire, who are from Utah. There’s three performance stages throughout the entire festival so that there can be performances all day long. Attendees can expect to see dance performances and singer-songwriters throughout the weekend.
The Good Times Entertainment Break Dance Battle will perform Saturday — featuring a competition of breakdancers and hip-hop dancers.
“If one stage isn’t going, another stage has a performance,” Lee said. “The thing that I told the team is, ‘I don’t want it to be quiet at the festival at any point. So if one [performance] ends, you can make your way over to the other one and you’ll catch another amazing performance there.”
“I hope that [attendees] leave with a newfound appreciation for art in all of its forms,” Lee said. “Whether it’s visual art, whether it’s music, whether it’s poetry or films, art touches every aspect of our human lives, whether people are aware of it or not. Which is what’s really, really exciting and art is what makes life fun and colorful.”
Preparing downtown to be the ‘cleanest festival around’
(Courtesy Peyton Lee | City of St. George) Crowds visit the St. George Art Festival in 2023.
Shane Moore, St. George city director of parks and community services, manages the team that handles the logistics of preparing Town Square for the festival. His team measures and marks all the spots for vendors, brings in picnic tables and sets up the various performing stages. They are also in charge of gathering volunteers to help at the festival.
“There’s a lot that goes into something this size, and we have to do it as a team,” Moore said. His team also makes sure the artists are taken care of including delivering water and being booth sitters — sitting at artists’ booths while they use the restrooms.
“We like to be the cleanest art festival around, and so we have a team of employees and volunteers that are out just picking up garbage the entire time and making sure that it’s clean,” he said.
“[Park and Community Service department] are the unsung heroes of our festival because they put in the work day and night, and so when it gets to the point where artists are showing up to move in, the park is already ready. It’s set to go,” Lee said.
“Everybody in our community can come down and see really unique art,” Moore said. “Our arts team actually does a really good job of trying to bring in new and different artists every year so that it’s not the same thing you see everywhere else. I’m really proud of the entire department and how well they can pull this off.”
Something for college students to multimillionaires
As far as visual artists, the application process starts in September. Applications go through a double blind jury process where jurors go through all the applicants and don’t see any of the artists’ names. All they see is the artist’s statement, medium of their work, five photos of their creations, and a photo of their booth setup. They judge based on artistic merit, marketability and technical skill.
Last year, nearly 20% of vendors were from southern Utah and 47% were from Utah. The remaining are from elsewhere in the United States or other countries.
Art vendors include paintings, hand-drawn art, sculptures, ceramics, jewelry, glass art, digital printed art and photography, all with varying prices.
“So whether you’re in college and you still want to decorate your dorm room you can get something,” Lee said. “Or if you’re one of those amazing people who has your multimillion dollar home and you want a nice piece of art to fill the space.”
Specific vendors include photographer Jamie A Kyle from Salt Lake City, local art welder Matt Clark and his son Logan, and Prince Duncan Williams who first experienced the festival years ago when it was a small event. WIlliams creates African silk thread art.