STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK
The Ketchum Arts Festival will celebrate its 25th anniversary this weekend at Sun Valley’s Festival Meadows.
About 110 artists will take part in the festival, which runs from 10 am. to 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday, July 14-15, and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, July 16.
But, as so many good things, the Festival started small, its genesis in a coffee klatch of local artists outside Nikki Potts’ Coffee Grinder in Ketchum.
“We were kind of blue because we hadn’t gotten into the Sun Valley Arts and Crafts Festival. Someone suggested that we start our own, and we had our first show with 12 artists on Janet Dunbar’s lawn across from Atkinsons’ Market,” recounted jeweler Sara Berquist. “We joked that we were the ‘loser show.’ But, once word got out that there were a lot of locals, the locals came out and supported us.”
The original mission statement of the Festival was quite practical in nature, said Lisa Horton, who helped organize this year’s Festival: The show would offer local artists an earning opportunity while enriching the community artistically.
“The mountain community was very supportive of one another,” said illustrator Kim Howard. “And the Festival was great for me as it required me to up my game, to do my work a little larger and more sophisticated.”
The group of artists grew to 43 artists the second year and to 65 the third. Too big for Dunbar’s Courtyard they moved to 4th Street between Leadville Avenue and East Avenue and, later, East Avenue between Sun Valley Road and 4th Street.
That worked fine until the year the temperature climbed to 104 degrees.
“The city had just chip sealed the road and tar was sticking to everybody’s artwork and some of the booths were sinking into the melting tar,” said Berquist. “We moved the Festival to Festival Meadows on Sun Valley Road in 2005, and it’s been there ever since.”
Of course, even Festival Meadows has had its share of trials and tribulations. One year someone forgot to turn the sprinklers off, and paintings were watered right alongside the grass. Another year a windstorm sent some of the tents tumbling across the field.
“One year we had a torrential rain,” recalled jeweler Christina Healy. “I had an appointment with a couple from Allen and Company—the head of Reuters and his wife. It started to rain and they took shelter in my booth. I zipped them in, but then the water started coming in under the tent. They were such good sports about it.”
Healy was already well established nationally after having started her jewelry career in 1973, selling her first necklace off her neck while living on Capitol Hill. But she was happy to champion the Ketchum Arts Festival which, she notes, is celebrating its 25th anniversary as she’s celebrating her 50th.
“We just needed to have a show that locals could count on, a show that wasn’t juried that could get them through the winter,” she said. Artists are like farmers who plant crops at the beginning of the season and hope for a good harvest.”
Healy, who served on the board for 15 years, suggested at one point that the Ketchum Arts Festival branch out to pull in a broader representation of artists. And soon the festival was fielding the likes of Twin Falls fine art sculptor Dave LaMure and other Idaho artists.
This year’s Ketchum Arts Festival will sport many artists who are new to the Festival. But it will also showcase 11 of the 12 artists who were in that original Ketchum Arts Festival: John Beehler, Sara Berquist, Brandi Egnatz, Jini Griffith, Kim Howard, Vint Lee Hughes, Sally Kerns, Kary Kjesbo, Nancy Liston, Elizabeth Pohle and Marie Stewart. Only jeweler John Caccia is missing, having moved to Hagerman.
Berquist noted that organizers have tried to keep the Festival affordable and have even showcased some local nonprofits like the Environmental Resource Center and Lyn Stallard’s Summer of Labs fundraiser for the animal shelter. The festival now has a free children’s art activity tent and food and beverage vendors.
“It’s turned into a nice Festival,” she said. “Now I see some of the kids who used to buy jewelry for their mothers coming with families of their own.”
Healy agreed: “My home and my son’s home are filled with local art that we purchased at the Ketchum Arts Festival. And I see so many people buy from the local artists here and take their work home with them--around the world, in some cases--as a reminder of their time in Sun Valley.”