Festival Banner (the Arts Festival Blog)
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Rick’s Top Picks for This Year’s Festival
July 8, 2017A few years ago, I started making a list of my “top picks” to help give the Festival’s board members some ideas of the events they shouldn’t miss (including official functions they were expected to attend). One board member asked if I could do a version without the official functions so she could share the … Read More
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Festival Shirts: The Inside Story
July 3, 2017I often say that the most difficult thing about producing the Central Pennsylvania of the Arts is paying for it. We’re a free party! I think we provide more free entertainment than anyone in the Centre Region—we present four full days of free music on three outdoor stages, in addition to smaller acts along the … Read More
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Festival Posters Tell Stories Too
June 9, 2017Our annual poster is a Festival tradition. Year in and year out since 1974, we’ve issued a poster to promote the Festival. In a feat that’s unique among art festivals, one designer, Lanny Sommese, has designed all of our posters. It’s a remarkable body of work, and it reflects only a small portion of Lanny’s … Read More
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Linda and Blake Gall Endowment Challenge
April 21, 2017Looking back on the thirty-plus years since she and her young family moved to State College from Manhattan, Linda Gall measures the passage of time alongside her Arts Festival experiences. Her girls were just toddlers when her neighbor Renee Marks invited her to first volunteer with the Festival. The people that she met, from the … Read More
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Capturing College Avenue
April 5, 2017A section of Chuck Fong’s College Avenue photo mural As we planned the 50th Arts Festival last year, I wanted to mark the occasion in a permanent way. Festivals are impermanent, and although they provide audiences with great experiences, they usually don’t leave much behind. Fifty years of festivals demanded … Read More
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Announcing Images 2017
February 28, 2017Although the Festival is still months away, there is no time like the present to think about entering Images 2017, our juried gallery exhibition. Images 2017 will hang in in the Betsy Rodgers Allen Gallery and Downsbrough Room of the Schlow Centre Region Library during the month of July. The library is in the heart … Read More
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Follow the Clues to the Fugitive
November 10, 2016A couple of weeks ago, I had a call from our sales rep from 3WZ radio, Cathy Brown, asking me if I would be the station’s fugitive in a contest the station was holding. I wasn’t to be a real fugitive, on the run from the law. Instead, she explained that the station would give … Read More
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Annual Meeting Brings New Directors
October 20, 2016The Festival’s annual meeting takes place in October and it’s an occasion for both joy and sadness. There’s joy as we note our accomplishments for the year and welcome new board members. There’s sadness too, as we say goodbye to those board members whose terms are ending. The festival had a successful anniversary year. According … Read More
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Festival “Show and Tell” at the CCHS
September 15, 2016This weekend our friends at the Centre County Historical Society are hosting a program in conjunction with its summer long exhibition, Arts Festival at Fifty: Stories of the Early Days. The program takes place at 2:00 pm, Sunday, September 18 at the society’s Centre Furnace Mansion, 1001 East College Avenue. It’ s called Arts Festival: … Read More
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2016 Brian Ebright Memorial Award Winner
August 10, 2016Now that the dust has settled on the Festival, I have time to recognize the great work and long service of fine work of Anne Layng. Anne is the winner of our 2016 Brian Ebright Memorial Award. Fulton Bank sponsors the award. The Festival staff named our only volunteer award for our first intern, Brian … Read More