Black Swamp Arts Festival 2007
Culture: Short Feature
At the end of each summer, the Black Swamp Arts Festival (BSAF) invites the community downtown to celebrate and experience the arts. The festival has free admission thanks to sponsorships, donations, and the help from more than 500 volunteers. As recent guest musician at the festival Lloyd Maines likes to say, “volunteers make the world go round.”
The BSAF brings to downtown Bowling Green well more than a hundred art exhibits, dozens of musical performances, and a mix of activities for all ages. The festival “brings out almost everyone from 2 to 102 years old,” says Skeeter Hunt of the organization Allies in Mental Health, “there’s something here for absolutely everyone.”
The festival had its start in 1993 when a number of community members and downtown business owners decided to celebrate the arts on a city wide level. Each year since, a stretch of Main Street in the downtown area is blocked off to welcome the arts wholeheartedly and to make way for artist booths, vendor stands, performance stages, and the tens of thousands of people that regularly attend the event. Artists from around the region display their work and nationally-touring musicians enjoy a diverse audience on one of the various stages.
An activity at a recent year's festival exemplifies the community spirit the event fosters. A large mural depicting the downtown area was created, made up of square panels painted by individual festival goers. The mural expressed the technique and style of each individual and displayed a unique image of the city.
The BSAF brings music to Bowling Green from both far away and close to home, and doesn’t single out specific genres. Each year the festival brings together jazz, blues, bluegrass, rock, and country performers, as well as music many might not have never heard before—like the fresh and melodic sound of Lenka Dusilová, an award-winning singer and songwriter from the Czech Republic that played on the main stage at BSAF in 2007.
The Student Loan, a band that provides it's own exciting mix of bluegrass, rock, and jazz, is an example of the local music the festival supports. Singer, guitarist, and violinist with the band Liz Chibucos says she moved to Bowling Green the year that BSAF started and has seen the festival grow every year.
Terri Hendrix and Lloyd Maines have come from Texas four times to play the BSAF, singing lyrics like, “My Grandma says I was a silly goose / Askin’ question where there ain’t no use.” Hendrix and Maines say they've always had a good time and see familiar volunteers each time they return, evidence to Maines that “people are happy to be a part of it.”.
The Black Swamp Arts Festival is a well-run and coordinated weekend, connecting art and the community. See you at the Swamp!