Bringing the community together: Art in the Park returns to Newport Beach Civic Center
Come Sept. 23, the Newport Beach Arts Foundation’s premiere event — Art in the Park — will return to the Civic Center green to celebrate artists and raise funds for the city’s arts programming.
This is the 18th time the festival has been presented, and organizers say this year will be bigger than it’s ever been before. All vendor spaces have been sold out, and co-coordinator and outgoing foundation president Carmen Smith said visitors will see close to 120 artists and artisans that Saturday.
Paintings, sculptures and photography will be available for purchase alongside jewelry, glass art, pottery and other ceramics.
Food will also be offered by the Juice Market and live music will be played by guitarist John DePatie — a divergence from previous efforts, Smith said, as the change in food and music will offer a more casual environment to enjoy.
Organizing for this year’s festival began in January, and Smith said they have more sponsors for this year’s event than usual. Proceeds from the event, collected through vendor fees and sponsors, go to the Newport Beach Arts Foundation to facilitate programming in the city such as its revolving sculpture garden, which cycles rented art pieces every two years.
Phase VIII was installed in June. Phase VII is still on display.
“[Art in the Park] will completely fill the green and the [Civic Center] Community Room. With the music and the food, it’ll really set the art scene where people will come and enjoy the artwork, mingle with artists and mingle with those in attendance,” said incoming Newport Beach Arts Foundation president and former Arts Commissioner Arlene Greer in an interview Thursday. “We invite people not only from our community, but from everywhere.”
Greer said Art in the Park was born of necessity. The city of Newport Beach established its Arts Commission in 1974. At the time, Greer said, the city needed a public-private partnership that would provide volunteers and financial programming to help supplement what was already being offered by the city. That led to the creation of the Newport Beach Arts Foundation in 1998.
“The Newport Beach Arts Foundation is a great source of support for the Arts Commission. At the beginning, it started out with the city’s programming as a concert series on the green. Shakespeare in the Park, museum bus tours, public art exhibitions — it’s grown to include more public art in the city, especially with the addition of the sculpture garden of the exhibition, which is now the focus of the foundation’s support,” Greer said.
“Our goal in the future will be to have more public-private partnerships and to grow the foundation membership and the proceeds that are available from the foundation to give more vibrancy to the city’s arts programming,” Greer said.
Typically held in October, the event has been shifted to September this year out of concerns about inclement weather, though Smith acknowledged the potential for temperatures to be less than ideal in September as well. Art in the Park will begin at 10 a.m. and end at 4 p.m. No admission fees are charged and parking is free. People will be able to purchase pieces of artwork, and the Chuck Jones Center for Creativity will provide children’s arts activities.
“It’s beautiful,” Greer said. “When you look down at the green, it’s tents and booths. It’s a really beautiful atmosphere. There’s something for everyone there ... In the past, we’ve had the library come out and do ... their book sale every year and really racked up some good donations from buying their used books. We hope they’ll be there again this year because this is very popular with the community and that helps to support the library. We all have a partnership together.
“What [Art in the Park] does is it brings the community together. The arts bring the community together. People, who otherwise stay home, know the event exists and will come down that day in support of the artists. The arts lovers and people who come down because they’re curious or they’re a student population because we’re raising awareness of arts in the community, and they are very much interested. This event is very popular every year [and] ... provides resources and drives people to all the arts programming that’s offered in the city.”
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