ArtsCenter hosts craft festival in honor of local roots

The ArtsCenter in Carrboro is paying homage to its local roots this weekend.

On Saturday, the ArtsCenter will host a craft festival of the namesake in partnership with Cameron’s Gift Shop, WomanCraft, Amante Gourmet Pizza, Fleet Feet Sports, Hickory Tavern and the Hampton Inn & Suites.

The Local Roots Craft Festival constitutes the Center’s first springtime festival and is sponsored by the town of Carrboro and the North Carolina Arts Council.

Louise Tremblay, the summer camps director for the ArtsCenter, said the festival’s name is a meditation on the Carrboro community’s long-standing commitment to incubating the arts.

“It was just this idea of sort of looking at what’s special about our community — which, for us, is really the creativity that’s here — and then focusing on the longevity of these groups and inviting other people to kind of join us in celebrating that,” Tremblay said.

Tremblay said the festival was organized after vendors and community members expressed interest in a spring bazaar to complement the center’s annual Elf Fair, a holiday craft fair set in December.

Visitors will be able to venture from tent to tent, surveying local, hand-made goods from approximately 25 vendors. Merchandise will range from traditional art, such as watercolor paintings and ceramics, to more eclectic wares such as repurposed jewelry, wooden ornaments and hand-made instruments.

Indoors, Cameron’s and WomanCraft will host a trunk show and artisan demonstrations respectively.

The festival will also have pottery and weaving demonstrations, a corn hole competition and an art table for painting projects.

In addition, a dunk tank will be on-site, giving community members and students the chance to dunk local figures, including Chapel Hill Chief of Police Chris Blue, “Big Fish” author and UNC English professor, Daniel Wallace, and Representative Graig Meyer from the North Carolina House of Representatives.

The proceeds from the dunk tank will fund scholarships for low-income students to take classes at the ArtsCenter.

Wallace said that he was looking forward to crossing getting dunked off his bucket list. He also said that the philanthropic effort behind the dunk tank served as further impetus.

“It just seems like the right thing to do,” he said.

Vendors also expressed their excitement for the festival.   

Buffy Maske, a Pittsboro resident is the multimedia artist and founder of Recriprocities, a jewelry vendor in Carrboro. Maske said she is anxious to see the wares on exhibition.

“I’m almost more excited to see what other artists have been doing in the area than to sell my stuff at some of these markets,” she said.

Maske said the Carrboro community is an anomaly among artistic hubs in that it is collaborative rather than competitive.

“You’re just surrounded by people who are kind of immersed in their own genre of art and they’re committed to their field. It’s very supportive and people feed off of each other,” she said.

Brooke Brucke, a Carrboro resident and soap-maker, said the diversity of and affinity between artists in the area is what drew her to Carrboro. She also said she hopes many come out to the festival.

“There are so many different types of artists and people who make wonderful things and it’s good for people to just get out and see that.”     

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