STARKVILLE — The Cotton District Arts Festival is coming back this weekend after an 18-month absence, boasting a concentrated layout and host of new artists selling their wares.
The event has seen its fair share of difficulties in recent years, from the pandemic, inclement weather and then skipping last year to reschedule the event from the fall back to its original spring date. Juliette Reid, the executive director of the event’s organizing partner the Starkville Area Arts Council, said the festival this year is focusing on its fundamentals.
“It’s more condensed, with everything more centrally located,” she said. “… We just pared it down to what works and what doesn’t, really focusing on the art, music and food. … We’re very excited to get back to the basics.”
The festival will take place from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, with a kickoff reception the day before at 4:30 p.m. at the Mississippi State University Visual Arts Center to show off the contestants and judges of its juried art competition. A second kickoff event has also been scheduled from 6-9 p.m. Friday at Fire Station Park with a concert and a few vendors.
Saturday’s festival will include more than 150 artists across 102 vendor tents, with the event historically hosting everything from traditional art to fiber arts to candles and soap to leather boots, stretching up University Drive from the VAC past Adkerson Way.
Despite the number of artists rising from the 2023 festival, Reid said, the footprint of the event will be more condensed than in previous years at roughly half the length of the 2023 iteration. SAAC has made this year’s map interactive online and capable of pinpointing every vendor and event, even guiding guests to their destinations by GPS.
Reid said the smaller footprint and stage layout is in part out of respect for St. Joseph Catholic Church down the road preparing for Easter. But even with a shorter walk to get through the festival, Reid said SAAC has seen an influx of new artists coming this year, with spots getting more competitive each year as the festival attracts artists from across the state and beyond.
“We have a good mix of a lot of things this year,” she said. “There are a lot of new vendors who’ve never done the festival before and a lot of returning people. … There are going to be a lot of traditional paintings, prints and originals. A lot of jewelry vendors. We have a lot of crochet vendors this year because crochet is very trendy right now. I’m very excited.”
Joe MacGown is one of those returning vendors, having attended the festival for more than a decade to sell his drawings alongside his son Joseph. An entomologist and scientific sketch artist by trade, he sets up a tent to sell wares and interact with guests as his son does the same with his own art and pottery.
“Everybody’s very excited and hopeful that the weather will be good,” he said. “… The last one we did was really rainy a year and a half ago, so this might be the best one we’ve had in five years. … Starkville has changed a lot, the art crowd has changed a lot. There are a lot of younger artists now.”
Aside from shopping, guests can look forward to a host of live musical acts. This year will have two stages, with the Main Stage at the far east end of the festival and the Del Stage on Adkerson. Reid said the Del Stage will focus more on singer-songwriter performances, compared to more conventional bands and even theater productions on the Main Stage.
Other attractions include the Taste of Starkville local restaurant competition, Pet Parade, costume contest and trick show in conjunction with Small Mercies Animal Rescue, Children’s Village by Starkville Strong and the International Village courtesy of the World Neighbor Association.
“I’ve done a lot of festivals, had art in 100 international shows,” MacGown said. “… But I love doing the one here, because I live here. People know me really well here so I see a lot of people I know, and I love sharing my art. … This is my favorite one, of all the festivals I’ve done.”
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