Culture, summer complement each other for Three Rivers Arts Festival

Three Rivers Arts Festival

June 5 – 14

www.artsfestival.net

Nothing kicks off s summer in… Three Rivers Arts Festival

June 5 – 14

www.artsfestival.net

Nothing kicks off s summer in Pittsburgh like a healthy dose of the arts.

The Three Rivers Arts Festival will soon bring vast numbers of artist vendor stalls to Downtown Pittsburgh, allowing art to dominate the city and bring in the summer season.

“The Three Rivers Arts Festival presents unique, diverse, high-quality programming in a multitude of genres, featuring nationally recognized talent and the cream of the local crop,” Lauren Bracey, public relations and marketing manager for the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, said.

Pittsburgh’s traditional Three Rivers Arts Festival will welcome its 50th year this summer, and this distinctive year’s highlights include “more than 50 live music performances, 250 artists in the Artists Market, an expanded weekend children’s area, visual arts exhibitions in 12 Cultural District gallery spaces and daily film screenings, circus performances and theatrical readings,” Bracey said.

He added, “Watching a live concert on the grass in Point State Park, strolling through the artists’ booths and exhibitions, having a funnel cake — for many Pittsburghers, this is the only way to start summer.”

The festival also includes exhibitions such as woodwork, calligraphy, quilting, animation and glass, according to its Web site.

Vast and numerous, the stretch of the featured arts can be grasped with a Web search through its online programming. Whether searching by day, by artwork or by place, the chances to experience something new are readily available.

“New,” however, does not necessarily mean exotic.

“More than half of the musical acts we present are local,” Bracey said. “Many of the artists presented in our visual arts exhibitions are from the Pittsburgh region, and about 40 percent of artists in the Artists Market are from Pennsylvania.”

This offers college artists the opportunity to enter the scene.

“When the festival first began in the 1960s, university artists and student performing ensembles were regularly presented,” Bracey said. “Festival exhibitions regularly include the work of local university faculty members and students.”

The festival is not limited to Pennsylvania-based artists. It gives everyone — not just Pittsburgh residents — a chance to explore the arts.

“To break down traditional barriers to arts access, the overwhelming majority of festival programming is free,” Bracey said. “And to extend our reach into the community, we work with a host of community partners, from the Pennsylvania Resources Council, to Holy Family Institute, to the Children’s Museum.”

But this free access does not aid in funding the arts festival.

“I think it is safe to say that every arts organization has felt the effects of the economy’s decline this year,” Bracey said. “That said, we are presenting 100 distinct events and exhibitions featuring more than 500 artists, so we are making the best of everything that is available to us.”

The Three Rivers Arts Festival is a division of The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion and development of Pittsburgh’s Cultural District.

“Three Rivers Arts Festival became a division of The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust in January 2009,” Bracey said. “Previously, the festival was a special project of Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh. The festival’s history and program — bringing people Downtown for arts experiences — was a great fit with the Trust’s ongoing work to animate and invigorate Downtown Pittsburgh through the arts.”

The Three Rivers Arts Festival has always held enormous economic importance to Downtown business — VisitPittsburgh.com, a city-based tourism Web site, estimates that the festival generates $23 million for businesses overall.

The changes to management promise to provide further improvements and even more vendors in the future, especially as the festival prepares to ask for feedback from the hundreds of thousands of projected visitors.

“We will be offering both on-site and online surveys to gather ideas about what they think the festival should be as we prepare for the next 50 years,” Bracey said.

For a detailed look at the festival’s concert line-up, head to www.artsfestival.net and get your art on.