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Show Memories Of The First Arts Festival that goal. Personality conflicts con-flicts almost never occurred." occur-red." "Deadlines used to drive us crazy but the final deadline, the night before the festival was the worst. It seemed like we had forgotten a million things but couldn't figure out what they were. ' ' "The night before we walked until about- lam marking the street and again wondering if we had everything every-thing taken care of and more than that, wondering if all our work would be to any avail ' "The festival still provides me with the one thing I originally wanted. It brings art tov me in my home town." ... iiwhihwim iiiiiiiiiii umwmwmtmmmmmmm I "We got up the nextv morning at 5am and began to set things up. About 10am, the people began to arrive, : thousands of people .we couldn't believe it." "Then we ran into some traffic problems and I took off to straighten them out. I hardly even got to see the actual festival, in fact I hardly got to see the next three festivals. I was always somewhere else, trying to straighten out some problem that had arisen." "The hardest part was Sunday after it was all over. The crowds had all gone home ! and the artists had either gone to a party or home. We just sat there thinking about our one last task - cleaning up the mess. It had been a success; everyone knew it had been a success. It was a tremendous feeling that with your first attempt you had succeeded. All we wanted to do was rest but there was still the matter of cleaning up, our last commitment. We sat for a minute, then all got up at once, and finished the job. " "Afterwards, we went to the Alamo. It was one of .the only places in town 'that had any beer left. We had all thought of celebrating all night but were so exhausted that we soon went to bed. ' ' Jim Patterson played an integral part of the Park City Art Festival from 1970 to 1973. He resigned from his post after the festival of '73 for reasons he declined to get into. "The festival still provides me with the one thing I originally wanted," says Jim Patterson . " It brings art to me in my home town." This week marks, the 10th Anniversary of Park City's Annual Arts Festival. Since its humble, beginnings a decade ago, the Festival has grown into one of the finest exhibitions of its kind in the country. A meticulous and highly professional panel of jurors has insured that each " year the quality of work exhibited is finer and finer. The festiyal ' s reputation has spread ; far ; and wide .with thousands traveling significant signifi-cant distances to either display their work or add to their collections. This year's festival will see fewer artists exhibiting than in recent years but conversely convers-ely the quality of work is expected to far surpass that of earlier festivals. It all started ten years ago when popular local resident Jim Patterson, who incedent-ly incedent-ly is not an artist, thought "Why not have an Arts Festival in Park City?" Of course Jim Patterson refuses to take all of the credit - he will say that it was John Flannery, Jennifer Sharp, Mike Dohje, Marie Springer and others who along with himself created the first festival. But it was originally Patterson's idea. "I got out of the Army in '69," says Jim Patterson, "and I took a vacation. While traveling I passed through Virginia City, Nevada and there was an art festival going on. I thought to myself, 'What a perfect that the festival idea was so appealing to all of us was thaf there seemed to be a lack of culture in Utah at that time and we all felt that Park City was a perfect place to get something going. Basically, Basic-ally, I liked the idea because it brought art to- me right here in my hometown," he added. - "We started working on the festival around the end of June. It was one of those enjoyably frustrating type of things. None of Us had any idea of what the actual outcome would be because nothing like this had ever been tried in Park City before. Thinking back, that was the most frustrating part of the whole project just wondering if it would all come off," Patterson said. "Gradually we began to get organized. John Flannery Flan-nery was put in charge of publicity and he did a fantastic job although he never got to see the festival - , he left for Africa in late July." "We got most of our ideas from the artists themselves. They were all very enthused and helped us with the contacting of other artists as well as giving us a good idea of what the public is interested in with respect to art." "We used every means we could think of to contact potential exhibitors - theH mail, posters, the media and word of mouth." "Eventually we got about f , .-:: " - ; ' '' '" w.-.-;.:.::-:w:-:v ..,... .fr- - .. , Iv' V ' milk r A U! !- Jim Patterson 150 artists who were interested inter-ested in the festival. There was no specific judging of work for the show, only some loose guidelines. All work had to be hand-made by the artists and no commercial items were accepted - that was about all." "It was a new show and at first artists were skeptical about exhibiting and occasionally occa-sionally that skepticism wore off on us Like I said, we were constantly wondering if it would be a success or failure. It was not trial and error, it was only trial. We just had to see if it would work." "But since it was a one shot deal, we all took great precautions to make sure everything went smoothly.. We had fire protection, traffic control, and we spent a lot of time making sure the local merchants were taken care of. That again was one of the things we worried about most; have we left something out? - have we forgotten to take care of anything?" "Probably the most impressive im-pressive aspect of the festi- . val's organization was the way we all worked together. Everyone had one thing in mind - the festival - and everyone worked towards place for a festival.' I guess the thing that struck me the most was the contrast of the colorful artists displaying their work against the background of the rustic buildings of an old mining town." "Later that year I moved to Park City," continued Patterson. "That summer there wasn't a lot of work and I was unemployed. I had a lot of time to think when I remembered the art festival of Virginia City and began wondering if the same type of event could go over in Park City." "I really didn't know how to go about it," said Mr. Patterson, "so I called my friend John Flarinery, who was a .photographer and writer. John gave me some names of several local artists and I contacted Jennifer Giddings Sharp, John Stagg and Dave Chaplain. They were all very interested in the idea of a festival and gave me their support. Then I got ahold of Mike Donje, who like me was not an artist and had no art background. Donje became one of the most active organizers of the first festival and really helped get it all together." "One of the main reasons |
