Hundreds gathered at Central Park Sept. 27 and 28 for the 52nd annual Corvallis Fall Festival to celebrate music, local art and community to fundraise for various local charities.
The festival is a nonprofit event and is one of the largest art festivals in the area, featuring over 170 art booths that feature handmade items of different mediums, a food court and two stages with nonstop live entertainment, according to the event’s website.
In addition, there were interactive art activities in the Art Discovery Zone and a Young Artist Marketplace where artists from ages eight to eighteen sold their art pieces for twenty five dollars or less.
Along with the festival, there was a Night Street Dance on Saturday and the 42nd Annual Fall Festival Run on Sunday presented by the Heart of the Valley runners.
According to Donele Searing Starr, the executive director of the Corvallis Fall Festival, the festival started in 1973 as a joint endeavor between the Corvallis Chamber of Commerce and Oregon State University as a way to welcome students and faculty back to OSU in the fall and has been on the fourth weekend of September every year since.
“I think it’s really important for people to understand that this is really a community event all the way through,” Searing Starr said.
This year’s festival welcomed 50 new artists, which Searing Starr said “keeps things fresh and the quality of artwork high here with a lot of options for folks.”
She emphasized that the event would not have been possible without the efforts of over 150 volunteers and their strong collaborations with a variety of organizations, including the Arts Center, Parks and Recreation and other Benton County nonprofits and charities.
“We continue to develop our youth and family programs at the festival so the Art Discovery Zone for families is super busy right now with kids making art or kids selling art–the community stage is bustling with things like dance for the kids to enjoy, magicians, clowning, all kinds of things,” Searing Starr said.
Lily Wright, a third-year majoring in Elementary Education, found out about the event through a flyer and attended the festival with her friends to scope out some items for her new apartment.
“I saw a lot of local art, paintings and photographs of the landscape, and some really cool crochet plushies,” Wright said.
Gwen Autrey has been coming to the Fall Festival for years since she moved to Corvallis in 1988 and was attending with her daughter and grandchildren.
Autrey said that she enjoys the event because of the chance of “running into old friends and just simply seeing the art that people create, and then having the food and listening to music, so it’s a wonderful place to come for the day.”
Searing Starr said the event consists of year-round planning and they are already making notes from this year on how they can make next year’s festival event more successful.
“The festival itself is a charitable organization, for example last year we raised over $20,000 for a dozen Benton County charities. So this is an event that benefits from community and benefits the community.”
For more information on this year’s Corvallis Fall Festival and to stay updated about next year’s festival visit Corvallisfallfestival.org.
