Bellefonte Arts & Crafts Fair to Fill Historic Streets

This story originally appeared in The Centre County Gazette.

BELLEFONTE — For more than 40 years, Bellefonte Arts and Crafts Fair has drawn crowds into the heart of this historic Centre County borough, and will do so again this year on Friday, Aug. 7 and Saturday, Aug. 8.

The event is held on Allegheny and High streets starting at 10 a.m. on both days. The streets will be lined with food vendors, adult and youth artists and children’s crafts accompanied by musical entertainment, according to Chairwoman Juanita Lose.

“This is a big event that offers a great deal,” Lose said in a statement to The Gazette. “Musical entertainment can be heard from the start of the fair until the end.”

Lose said the fair continues to grow year after year.

“We welcomed between 8,000 and 10,000 visitors this past year,” Lose said. “Our town is Victorian, and the structures throughout the area are beautifully detailed. Our businesses are small and quaint and offer a variety of goods.”

A free shuttle bus service is available for visitors to ride from Bellefonte High School to the event and back.

The array of artisan choices is vast, with something for everyone who visits the fair.

Adult artists sell jewelry, pottery, wood, candles, soap, paintings, drawings, textiles, and glass crafts. Food artisans sell sauces, jerky, cookies, maple syrup, honey, and cheese. Youth artists feature handcrafted items as well.

And when folks are perusing what artisan vendors have to offer, they can also enjoy a wide offering of food choices.

“Food vendors offer french fries, chicken on a stick, snow cones, lemonade, funnel cakes, pizza, and hot sausage sandwiches,” Lose said, adding that wine and spirits can also be sampled and purchased.

Musical entertainment will also give visitors some toe-tapping tunes featuring a variety of genres that include the Blues Brothers Tribute, Area 38, Urban Fusion, Pure Cane Sugar, and Gaetano’s Blues and Rock Band, to name a few.

A new attraction to this year’s event is Rodney Lose of Hot Rod Designs.

Rodney Lose is a chainsaw carver. A Bellefonte native, he has been carving for six years, and created the chair and benches that are in the Children’s Garden located behind the Centre County Historical Museum.

The committee will also hand out free balloons to the children on Saturday from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. or until they run out. The free balloons will be located near the children’s craft tent.

Lose said the cost to host the event varies from year to year.

“We receive a grant from Happy Valley Tourism, which we use for some of the advertising,” Lose said. “The booth costs and vendor fees help us manage the fair each year. Sponsors also contribute to our event.”

Lose is not a one-woman show. This is her first year as chairwoman, and said she and co-chairwoman Bobbi Barltley, who is also the event’s treasurer, begin planning as early as January every year.

“(We start) compiling a list of artists and then creating packets or emailing the information to them,” Lose said. “We then wait for the applications to come back.”

Volunteers are the main reason the fair continues.

“Everyone involved with the fair is a volunteer. They monitor the information booth where visitors can get booklets, and stories about the fair and our community,” Lose said. “They help set up tables, canopies, mark booth spaces and close down streets and bag the meters. They send out the invitations, assign booths, track deposits, and drop off signs to announce the fair.”