Art in the Pearl gathers in the Park Blocks

A Labor Day weekend fixture in downtown Portland since 1997, the free festival offers booths for more than 100 artists, plus food, music, demonstrations, and hands-on activities.
Artist Michael Gard's sculptures and mobiles will be at Booth S75 at Art in the Pearl.
Artist Michael Gard’s sculptures and mobiles will be at Booth S75 at Art in the Pearl.

It’s Labor Day weekend, which for thousands of people in and around Portland means one thing: heading downtown to the North Park Blocks to catch the booths and food and music and more of the free end-of-summer celebration Art in the Pearl.

As it has since 1997, Art in the Pearl will take over the North Park Blocks, on Eighth Avenue between Northwest Davis and Northwest Flanders streets, with enough booths to showcase the works of well more than 100 artists. This year’s hours are 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 31 and Sept 1, and 10 a.m.-4 p.m. on Labor Day: Monday, Sept. 2.

Artist Kelli MacConnell's prints will be at Booth S49.
Artist Kelli MacConnell’s prints will be at Booth S49.

The volunteer-run Art in the Pearl calls itself a “Fine Arts & Crafts Festival,” and that’s part of its attraction: It considers “art” and “craft” part of the same family, and includes work by Northwest artists in a broad diversity of forms, including two- and three-dimensional mixed media, ceramics, digital art, drawing, fiber arts (including wearable art), glass, jewelry, metal, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, and woodworking.

In addition to the art booths (yes, you can buy the art) there’ll be plenty of world music, food booths, hands-on art activity areas for kids and adults (yes, the festival’s kid-friendly, and you can even bring your dog on a leash), and demonstrations by handweavers, sculptors, ceramicists, calligraphers, woodworkers, and metal artists. The weather looks good, too: mostly sunny, with highs forecast at 93 Saturday, 87 Sunday, and 76 Monday.

Left: Ken Hanson, Aurora & Amethyst Sea Fan, glass, Booth N92. Right: Carol Risley, Leather Pear Bag, Booth N77.

Art in the Pearl was begun as a nonprofit organization in 1997, partly in response to the demise two years earlier of the annual ArtQuake celebration, which had been a downtown Portland celebration of performing and visual arts for 19 years. Art in the Pearl has outlasted that and is still going strong — for one weekend every year, a free outdoor gallery for everyone.

Jeffrey Fuchs, "Mad Hatters," painting, Booth S35.
Jeffrey Fuchs, “Mad Hatters,” painting, Booth S35.

Bob Hicks, Executive Editor of Oregon ArtsWatch, has been covering arts and culture in the Pacific Northwest since 1978, including 25 years at The Oregonian. Among his art books are Kazuyuki Ohtsu; James B. Thompson: Fragments in Time; and Beth Van Hoesen: Fauna and Flora. His work has appeared in American Theatre, Biblio, Professional Artist, Northwest Passage, Art Scatter, and elsewhere. He also writes the daily art-history series "Today I Am."

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