By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Andrew Gilliatt had just come in from viewing the art show on Main Street Friday night.
Gilliatt is one of the artists who decided in spring what art would be included in the Black Swamp Arts Festival Juried Show and now he and Brad Scherzer and Kelsey Scharf had returned to decide the award winners.
They had yet to start their deliberations, but Gilliatt was already willing to declare one winner.
Festival weekend is always an exciting time in Bowling Green, said Gilliatt, who teaches ceramics in the BGSU School of Art. And that’s especially true after a year’s hiatus because of the pandemic. “I’m just excited to see all these people listening to music and buying artwork.”
The festival opened at 5 p.m. Friday night with the strains of bluegrass drifting from the Main Stage through the juried art show.
For the first time since the festival’s inception in 1993, the art show opened for business on Friday night.
Neil Kemarly, a woodworker who won best of show in 2017, allowed that Friday nights at art fairs do not generate a lot of sales. But he was happy to trade that for not having to get up at 4:30 in the morning for a dawn load in on Saturdays. That was the practice in the past at the festival, and one that artists have long asked to have changed.
Now Kemarly and his fellow exhibitors were happy in the late afternoon sun greeting customers.
The new timing also meant more organized set up process, which Kemarly appreciated.
Artists waited in staging areas, and a few were let in at a time to set up.
Thomas Gelsanliter, who operates one acre ceramics in Milan, Michigan, with his wife Sarah, was also pleased with the new schedule.
He reflected on the summer when art fairs eased back into business. Sales have been good, he said, attributing it to pent up demand. And often COVID protocols meant artists were fewer and further spread out and that help with visibility.
That’s not the case with Black Swamp where the juried art show featured its quads with each artist having a corner, which Gelsanliter likes, except where an accommodation needed to be made for the new parklets on South Main.
By 6 p.m. there were a steady flow of people down Main Street. Among them, Chuck and Patty Schmitt, of Toledo, were intent on getting to the Main Stage area, to hear Eilen Jewell.
Patty Schmitt said they’ve been to festival before and like the atmosphere of the art fair and downtown.
Friends Angie Calcamuggio, Fostoria, and Jan Beeley, Perrysburg, were looking forward to hearing outlaw country performer Wade Davis, that night’s closer.
While this was Calcamuggio’s first time at the festival, Beeley has been before though not for a few years. “I just like the street fair feel to it, all the people watching and the music.”
Andrew Pfisterer, of Toledo, likes going to art festivals, but hadn’t been to the Black Swamp festival. A friend suggested they go, and he was game. “We’ve been locked down and wanted to get out and see some really good photography and really good art and see the creativity people bring to this area.”
He was not alone in that.
By the time Rev. Peyton’s Big Damn Band hit just after 8 p.m., seating was scarce in the Main Stage in Lot 2. The beer garden was packed with four generations of festivalgoers. The situation benefited from the change in the festival’s permit that allowed people to carry beer and wine throughout the Main Stage. Without orange snow fencing ringing the beer garden area, the foot traffic flowed more freely between the food vendors and the tables and seating.
A few people in the crowd were wearing facial coverings, a reminder that the coronavirus is still among us even as the festival moves back toward normalcy.
