WEST POINT — About 200 people, most wearing protective face coverings, had come to the outdoor market on Commerce Street by 10:30 a.m. Saturday, West Point-Clay County Growth Alliance Director Lisa Klutts estimated.
Two dozen vendors set up booths to sell artwork, canned goods and baked goods in an event called “Art in the Parking Lot,” on the block between Broad Street and Jordan Avenue. Families rode a makeshift train pulled by a tractor through the streets nearby.
Residents and vendors alike said they appreciated the opportunity to get out of the house and support the city after the COVID-19 pandemic had kept people mostly indoors for the past seven months and forced the city to cancel or limit other events.
“I’m just glad they figured out a way to do it since they canceled Prairie Arts,” West Point resident Donna Melcher said.
West Point’s annual Prairie Arts Festival would have happened in May but was canceled due to the pandemic, as were the Market Street Festival in Columbus and the Cotton District Arts Festival in Starkville. Additionally, the city’s farmers’ market was limited to June and July.
Klutts is the Prairie Arts Festival community development director, and she said the arts festival and the farmers’ market combined with the annual “Makin’ Hay Day” to form Art in the Parking Lot.
Makin’ Hay Day usually includes games and a hayride in the West Point City Park, but both were inadvisable due to social distancing protocols. The train provided a similar activity to the hayride but kept people at a safe distance apart, Klutts said.
The event also featured a hand sanitizing booth and live music from guitarist Paul Brady of Starkville.
West Point’s parks are still closed, and moving all the activity to the street provided more space for more vendors, since Makin’ Hay Day usually only has a dozen, Klutts said. She did not advertise for vendors, but so many were interested in participating that she had to turn some away for the first time ever, she said.
“I had to limit it to (vendors) from the farmers’ market and a few from Prairie Arts who reached out,” she said.
Two previous Prairie Arts vendors, Betty Sparrow and Anita Montgomery, said they were grateful when Art in the Parking Lot arose as an opportunity for business and socializing. Sparrow, of West Point, paints and decorates gourds and donates some of the sales proceeds to cancer research.
“We hadn’t had a show all year,” she said. “This gave us an opportunity to go out and see people, and to sell some (gourds) and actually support West Point.”
Montgomery and her husband, Mike, live in Columbus and usually make jewelry and scarves, but they ventured into paper crafting this year. She agreed with Sparrow that this year has been a challenge for those in the arts business, and she called Art in the Parking Lot “a jubilation” and “a real blessing” after May’s Market Street Festival was canceled in her hometown.
“(We’d been) trying to work through other media, like Etsy, Instagram, Facebook and word of mouth to try to find opportunities,” Montgomery said.
Klutts said Makin’ Hay Day usually brings the community together, and such events are especially important this year in whatever format they can be salvaged.
“People want somewhere to get out and shop and be outdoors … where they also feel comfortable and safe,” she said.
Tess Vrbin was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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