The 55th Annual Spring Tennessee Craft Fair happens this Friday through Sunday at Centennial Park. This is a celebration and opportunity for attendees to shop crafted artwork directly from award-winning artists while learning about what inspires them. The event is hosted by Tennessee Craft, an organization founded in 1965 with a mission to provide a network for craft artists and communities statewide that are dedicated to uplifting handmade crafts past and present.
“We offer opportunities to engage artists, artists to engage peer-to-peer with each other and provide opportunities for art collectors,” executive and fair director Kim Wagg said. “We are best known for our Tennessee Craft Fair in the spring and fall, but we do so much more throughout the year. From scholarships and exhibitions, we have professional development and education. We go into the elementary schools that have minimal to no arts budget or programming. We go in to the university level with seasoned artists who have made a full-time profession out of it and they’re talking to the students and they are telling them tips of the trade and giving them a different perspective as they’re planning their life after college.”
She continues: “May is a good time for Mother’s Day gifts or a gift for someone else, or treat yourself a gift for yourself. What you’ll find there number one, the individual artists who made that artwork. You can talk to them and you can hear their journey, their stories, which makes that artwork even more meaningful. It’s a requirement of our shows that the actual artists are present all three days. It’s 11 different mediums, there is painting, wood, glass, clay, fiber, metal, printmaking, and there’s a price point for everybody. Something for everybody is what we strive for when we curate it, but you know that you’re going to get handmade. You’re going get something that is not commercial, it is handmade by a individual, or there could be two of them, artists and every one of their pieces is one of a kind. Craft is embedded in the history of Tennessee. People will come to Tennessee from out of town and they’re going to go home with wonderful photos, wonderful memories of the beautiful state parks we have, the great food, the wonderful waterfalls. But they will go home with a piece of craft art made by an artist.”
Additional event opportunities:
Starting tonight (April 29) RAYE is performing at the Ryman. Thursday night (April 30) WNXP presents Cass McCombs at the Blue Room and Searows is at The Basement East. We are back at the Blue Room on Friday (May 1) for another WNXP presents show as Liz Cooper performs her new album New Day and Ethel Cain is at First Bank Amphitheater. Saturday night (May 2) Florence and the Machine performs at Bridgestone Arena and wrap up this week’s listings Tuesday (May 5) with Failure performing at The Basement East and Courtney Barnett at the Ryman.
