By Jenn Lin
KYMN Intern
Dozens of artists from across southern Minnesota and the Twin Cities shared their talents and made connections last weekend in a newly expanded arts festival.
The Rice County Fall Festival, held October 2-4, was organized by the Northfield Arts Guild and incorporated events from the Studio ARTour and the Faribault Fall Festival. Celebrated throughout Northfield, Dundas, and Faribault, the event offered concerts, dance performances, arts and crafts, art tours at artists’ homes and studios and a fall festival and vendors’ markets.
Artists who participated in the festival were drawn to it said they wanted to show off their works to new audiences. Minneapolis-based artist Alex McGrath, the owner of a business called Deathcap Crochet, said it’s important to create opportunities for young and queer artists to gather, especially smaller communities.
McGrath used to live in Rochester, where there wasn’t a big art community for young and queer people, and had success in changing the landscape there. They hoped to support similar shifts in Rice County.
“[My friends and I] were planning markets and hosting events, and building the queer art community in Rochester,” McGrath said. “Now, there’s about 20 different markets that run in that realm of things, so it’s grown a lot over the past couple years.”
Abby Cotter, an Owatonna-based owner of a clothing boutique, was recruited to the festival by the owner of Oasis Cafe in Faribault, who was familiar with Cotter’s pop-up Barleyberry Boutique. Cotter aspires to open a brick-and-mortar shop and said she hoped to build new connections within southern Minnesota.
“I just like how small and connected it is,” Cotter said of the festival. “Something that everyone benefits from, as far as shoppers, vendors … I could have my shoppers come here and check with other vendors, and just help.”
This year marked the 22nd year for the StudioARTour. Northfield-based jewelry maker Andrea Torini said she’s seen the art tour evolve in the three years she’s participated selling Eastern European jewelry and Czech mosaic glass.
”My first [year] was at my own house because my studio was in my living room, andI had to clean out the furniture of my living room,” she said.
Torini’s spot on this year’s StudioARTour was near another Northfield-based artist,
Jenna Paulsen, who graduated from St. Olaf College in 2007. Paulsen took up painting as a hobby while on parental leave and is now a full-time artist. A first-time participant in the festival, Paulsen now has a studio in the Northfield Arts Guild’s Water Street Studios at 411 Water St. S.
“It’s been such a wonderful new offering for the community, especially as someone who’s kind of newly living in Northfield again after many years, to come back and have a place where there are other artists coming in and out, and we are able to work together during the day,” she said.
Paulsen said people looking to continue the celebration of art beyond the October events can stop by the studios every Saturday, with open hours from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Visitors, she said, can “come down and see that we’re making artwork all the time and changing things out and always have something new to look at.”
Jenn Lin is a reporter with the St. Olaf Messenger and an intern with KYMN Radio. Contact her through Rich Larson at rich@kymnradio.net
