The 13th Annual Park Hill Art Festival

Yesterday afternoon I attended the 13th annual Park Hill Art Festival, which is being held on the grounds of the Park Hill Masonic Lodge, located on Denver's East Side. This festival is produced and promoted by a company called ColoradoArtWeekend.com, the same one that produced the Centennial Art Fest last weekend. I recognized a number of booths from last week, but with over 100 artists displaying fine art and crafts from Colorado and beyond, there were, happily, plenty of booths I didn't recognize to check out. This festival is more compact than other art festivals I have attended, but being held in such a nice residential neighborhood only adds to the ambience.

The Park Hill neighborhood is divided into South Park Hill, North Park Hill, and Northeast Park Hill. This festival is taking place in South Park Hill on East Montview Boulevard, a tree-lined street filled, for the most part, with what can only be called mansions. On the eastern border of Park Hill is what used to be Stapleton International Airport. Back in the 1990s, the residents of that neighborhood had so much political clout that they were able have Denver's airport moved to what seems like the Colorado-Kansas border instead of allowing Stapleton to expand onto a large empty tract called the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, a former chemical weapons plant, now a national wildlife refuge. And so now, Park Hill is free of the sound of commercial jets taking off and landing. Of course, instead of being able to get to the airport from most parts of Denver within 20 minutes, it now takes far longer. And instead of a quick and cheap cab ride, it takes an expensive Uber to get there. However, I am certainly not bitter about that. Not at all. No way. In any case, the Park Hill Art Festival continues today from 10:00 until 5:00. It is definitely worth a look. Enjoy the art and the serene ambiance of one of Denver's more quieter neighborhoods.