The Golden Fine Arts Festival

This past weekend I attended the 33rd Annual Golden Fine Arts Festival, held each year on Golden's 11th Street, which runs along Clear Creek and the Clear Creek Historic Park near downtown Golden, Colorado. This is one of my favorite events of the summer, but I almost missed it due to a lack of parking. Unlike in previous years, the streets around the festival now require a special permit to park, and every single damn city parking lot was full. I made a last ditch swing through one of those lots, and happily, someone was just pulling out and I grabbed their space. The web site for the festival says that 30,000 people usually attend this event every year, and now I believe them, even if it didn't look like 30,000 people were there when I finally started browsing the art.

Golden was founded in 1859, and the area where the festival is held is part of an historic district which features many homes and commercial buildings, most from the 1870s. The Astor House Hotel, which until recently was a museum and now has been taken over by the Foothills Art Center, dates from 1867. It started out as a rooming house, and is known as the first place in town that had a bathtub. The owner rented out the bathtub to the public, and made more money from that than renting rooms. I wonder if the Motel 6 does that too? Just down the street is the Old Capitol Grill. Golden became the territorial capital of Colorado back in 1862, and the territorial legislators met in the upstairs of this building, and then headed down to the saloon on the first floor after their work was done. There was and still is a glassed-in area in the bar for the ladies, so they would not be corrupted by sitting in the bar area itself. I think they stopped this practice several years ago.

As for the art, there were 100 booths with over half the artists coming from out of state. There were a number of photographers displaying their work, mostly Colorado and western landscapes, although Scanlan Windows to the World Photography did have really nice photographs from around the globe. They are out of Glenwood, Iowa, by the way, which is just outside Omaha, Nebraska, which I have noted is featuring television ads trying to attract tourists there for a fun weekend. Seriously! But I digress. As I mentioned before, the festival was adjacent to the Clear Creek Historic Park, which has a number of buildings from pioneer days on display, such as the old schoolhouse in the background of the photograph on the left.  If they wanted, art goers could enter the park and tour the buildings right after they purchased one of those owl sculptures, or whatever the hell they are, as seen in the foreground. No doubt perfect for your balcony! All in all, a very pleasant afternoon. Although they had better fix their parking problems by next year, or if not, I will demand to know the reason why.