Each July, downtown State College pops with color and activity as vendor tents line the streets, wafts of food-truck aromas overtake the air, and the acoustics of live music bounce off buildings to produce the soundtrack of summer for the Central Pennsylvania Festival for the Arts.
Since its inception in the late 1960s, Arts Fest has attracted artists and performers from outlying counties to State College. The festival has blossomed into a national attraction over almost six decades, bringing more than 100,000 visitors and scores of out-of-town — and out-of-state — vendors and exhibitors to the Centre Region.
For many local artists, Arts Fest and the People’s Choice Festival of Pennsylvania Arts & Crafts are just two of the many festivals on a circuit that takes them throughout the region and around the country to showcase and sell their wares. Each festival is unique in its own right, as is each artist’s reason for attending.
State College resident Altyn Clark views each festival as an opportunity for a vacation. So far in 2025, he’s crossed Philadelphia and Corning, New York, off the list. He plans to visit festivals in New Jersey and Virginia before the end of the year. The retired engineer typically travels to eight festivals a year.
Clark specializes in impressionist landscapes in stained glass. His introduction to the discipline began in 2002, a year after his wife, Lizzie, visited a bed and breakfast operated by Barney and Bob Harris, a couple that taught classes on making stained glass.
“In 2001, my wife and I read an article in The Washington Post about a bed and breakfast you could go to on the Rappahannock River in northern Virginia and learn to make stained glass with this couple,” Clark says. “He was the retired glass blower for NASA, so he used to make things that would go up in satellites and space shuttles whenever NASA would need special glass parts. She was a stained-glass artist.”
Although Clark views his festivals as a vacation, the lead-up and preparation is far from a leisurely endeavor. On average, Clark takes approximately 50 pieces of equipment with him as part of his kit each time he travels. That kit includes a tent, glasswork, and other necessary accoutrements. He loads the pieces onto a minivan, which when fully loaded for a show weighs 1,350 pounds.
“I know this because I drove across the scales at the trash center in town before and after,” he says with a laugh. “I have to pick up and move every one of those 1,350 pounds about six or seven times in a weekend. I have to take it from my garage and put it into the van. I have to unload it from the van. I have to construct the tent. And I have to do all that in reverse after the show.”
It takes Clark about four hours to set up everything in a fashion that warrants his approval. Teardown, however, is far less time-consuming — it can be completed in a little over an hour.
Road Warrior
For State College resident Sandi Garris, life on the road further enhances the festival experience. At her peak, Garris estimates she traveled to more than 20 shows a year. These days, she’s trimmed it down to six to eight. So far in 2025, she’s visited Missouri, Virginia, and Illinois. Before year’s end, she’ll have traveled back to Illinois and added two Pennsylvania shows — including Arts Fest — to her festival circuit.
“Once I get on the road, I feel like I can breathe,” Garris says. “I’m just on the road, and I can listen to my audiobook. I really don’t care how far I drive. If I find a good show somewhere in Texas, I go to Texas. I’ve always liked the travel. I want to do different areas so that I keep getting new audiences. I try to do at least two new shows a year.”
Garris has been painting since the early 1980s. She was born in Pittsburgh but moved east to attend Penn State and has been a Centre County resident ever since. Creativity has always been part of her DNA. In earlier years, she weaved quilts under the apprenticeship of the Amish. She later moved to painting and now does it in a studio in her State College home. Garris typically loads 16 large paintings, 24 medium pieces, and many prints in her Ford Econoline when she travels.
“I sell a lot of big work now — 30 by 30 is big for me,” Garris says. “I sell everything from a $40 print to a $2,500 painting,” she notes. “If I sell across the board and sell big work, I’m happy.”
Although the focus of the road trips is to showcase and sell her paintings, Garris also uses them as an opportunity to explore new locations and traverse different terrains. To her, it’s just another piece of the larger endeavor that makes travel unique.
“Last year I did a circuit in Texas, so I had two Texas shows and I had one in Kansas City on the way home,” she says. “So between those shows, I found hiking spots and state parks and all that kind of stuff I wanted to do between shows. I really enjoy that part of it. It doesn’t always work out where you get a circuit like that, but I like doing it that way.”
While Clark and Garris embrace the travel that comes with the festival lifestyle, State College resident Kimberly Brooks Filkins of Me Kim Design Studio prefers to stay close to home and near her 4-year-old grandson. In her 30-plus years of making fused-glass artworks, Brooks Filkins has traveled to Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, Ocean City, Maryland, and Arts Fest. These days, she has a greater appreciation for keeping it close.
“I like sleeping in my own bed,” she says. “Traveling is a hard road to take — especially with my art.”
Brooks Filkins describes herself as a self-taught artist who learned and honed her craft through trial and error.
“Lots of explosions in the beginning,” she says with a laugh. “I have had a few stitches, but not bad. It could be worse.”
She was born in Bellefonte and briefly left the area for Ithaca, New York. Although the joys of festivals are numerous for her, she receives the most fulfillment when interacting with festival-goers. Arts Fest reunites her with high-school friends who return every year for the event, and festivals allow her to share her love of fused glass with those who haven’t seen it before.
“The people,” Brooks Filkins says without hesitation when stating what she enjoys most about festivals. “Describing and telling them what I do and how it’s done, because fused glass has been around for a while, but I don’t think people get to see it very often. It’s a different medium for a lot of people. It’s fun — I enjoy it a lot.”
Unpredictable Variables
While the travel, introduction to new people, and camaraderie are ingredients for a successful and memorable festival, one element out of anyone’s control can spoil the experience — bad weather.
Boalsburg resident Edgar Farmer, 79, began experimenting with woodcarving as a young Boy Scout in Virginia. Over time, he has used his intricately crafted woodwork to tell stories through mahogany, oak, and other types of wood. Today, he works with cottonwood that he travels to Erie to obtain.
During a show last year at the Port Warwick Art & Sculpture Festival in Newport News, Virginia, Farmer was confronted by a festival’s biggest threat.
“One of the days, it rained tremendously all day,” he recalls. “I had a rain suit on so I could walk around in the rain. People aren’t buying artwork in the rain.”
Thankfully for Farmer, wood isn’t easily damaged by the elements. For others, Mother Nature poses a bigger risk.
Two years ago at Arts Fest, a violent thunderstorm tore through the area, leaving visitors scrambling for cover and vendors scurrying about their space to protect the works they had spent significant time crafting.
“It was to the point that we had to hang onto the tent’s flaps so they wouldn’t hit the glass because it was so windy,” Brooks-Filkins says. “Luckily, we had friends there — my friends’ daughters were there — and they were helping. They were soaked, but they were happy to help. Weather is a big deal.”
Purchasing the right kind of tent isn’t only beneficial for preserving and protecting the art, but for keeping festival-goers out of harm’s way should winds turn those art pieces into projectiles.
“It’s dangerous, so you have to have a well-constructed tent with a lot of weight on it that’s waterproof and is going to be safe not only for your art but for spectators,” Clark says. “There are several companies that make those kinds of tents especially for artists. You have to buy one of those and learn how to put it up.”
State College resident and acrylic painter Alexander Ramos remembers the storms of two years ago like they occurred yesterday. An explosive gust lifted one of the legs of his tent off the ground and onto a downtown sidewalk. Ramos clutched one of the front legs tightly to secure it. Inside the tent, the wind caved in the sides, threatening the paintings inside.
“It was scary,” Ramos says. “It was intense thunder and lightning, heavy rain. I got drenched. I definitely do remember talking to a lot of people — not just at Arts Fest, but at People’s Choice, especially — a lot of booths went down. … After that experience, which was very harrowing, I learned a few things from talking with people who had damage. Some people had festival insurance that you could get to protect you from those types of circumstances.”
Ramos has since added festival insurance, and he’s debuting a new tent this year for Arts Fest and for the August Mount Gretna Outdoor Art Show.
Tracking the Trends
Helen and Allen Weichman, 74 and 76, respectively, registered Groundhog Blues Pottery in 1974, a year after Allen ended his service in the United States Army. Today, the Reeders-based couple crafts everything from color-splashed utensil holders to dachshund sculptures. For the past 20 years, the Weichmans have been fixtures at the People’s Choice Festival. They travel to about 12 shows a year but went to double that number earlier in their pottery careers.
“Setting it up and tearing it down at the end of the show is getting harder and harder because we’ve gotten older and the pots haven’t gotten any lighter,” Helen Weichman says.
While trips to Georgia, Connecticut, and Massachusetts were once routine stops on their circuit, the two now prefer to travel to festivals and craft shows in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Virginia.
According to Helen, when she and Allen first started making pottery in the 1970s, it was at the start of a resurgence of crafts. She says the trends in crafts typically move in 20-year cycles.
“People were really excited about craft shows,” Helen says of the 1970s-’90s cycle. “They were very popular. All craftsmen did really well — set up in a field with a really simple booth. You had cinder blocks and some boards. … We all had little children, and it was a very fun time.”
Although the Weichmans are still active on the craft and festival circuit, Helen says many who once sold alongside her at those events have since retired. She’s hopeful that the 20-year cycle will ignite a resurgence among younger people in the pottery space. And she’s doing her part to light to fuse. One of the things that brings her joy is teaching her craft to her 8-year-old grandson.
“Hopefully that generation will rebel against the hi-tech stuff and want to get back into crafting — that’s usually what happens,” she says. “But you don’t know what marketing things they’ll come up with 10, 20 years from now. Some young craftsmen are doing smaller markets, online sales, and things like that. Doing shows is a hard life, but it’s a great life.” T&G
Elton Hayes is a freelance writer in State College.
