One life to live !!!

Colorful, artistic, melodious, full of life … these are only a few adjectives that can describe the 41st Central Pennsylvania Arts Festival that was hosted at State College, PA last week. This was the first time I attended the Arts Fest even though I’ve been staying here in State College for 6 long years. I have only a few more weeks left in this heavenly town and so I had to rid myself of the guilt of not attending this artistic, musical and colorful extravaganza before I left. Also it was the last chance for me to show off what a cool place State College is to Shweta, who thinks that its a village.

Every year, the Arts Fest draws nearly 125,000 visitors to this otherwise “sleepy” college town. Well, when I say sleepy I am only talking about summers, when the 45,000 Penn State students are not on campus and all you see are a handful of international students and their visiting parents. For State College, the Arts Fest was like a shot of steriods. Entire downtown was under its grip for the past 4 days. Allen St. was littered with stalls put up by artists displaying their art work for sale. Each stall had something unique to offer - beautiful water color paintings, ceramic pottery, intricately carved wood work, hand made jewelry with precious stones, numerous artistic show pieces - you name it and it was there. I wanted to buy everything that I saw. The only thing that kept me in check was the sticker price on the art works. Being a totally unartistic person myself, I have the utmost reverence for the participating artists but still I could not digest the idea of buying a painting for $200 or a ceramic pot for $100 . I guess I’ve been spoilt by the Wallmarts and the Targets that offer mass produced art works for 1/10th the price. Not to mention the fact that everytime I really felt like buying something, the “Indian” inside me kept screaming “you’ve got to be kidding me I can buy this for 100 Rupees in India”. But not everyone was as cheap as me and I could see a lot of people picking up a lot of stuff.

After the shopping (non event) was over, Shweta and I went over to some food stalls for some mouth watering snacks. With our stomachs full, we proceeded to the Old main lawns where a band was playing. Unfortunately it was their last song so we moved on to Heister St. near GMan bar to see the street paintings. I guess it just was’nt our best day as it started raining and the artists covered their street paintings. We went back to Allen St. to catch another live band playing “Swing” Music. The band was awesome and it soon drew a number of budding swing dancers who started dancing around the stage.

The crowd got thicker as night fell and by the time we had dinner at Allen Street Grill, downtown pubs were bursting at their seams. It felt like a “fall semester football game friday night”. Cafe 210, RathSkellar, Zenos, Shandygaff, G-Man and all other watering holes had huge beelines at the enterance. walking on Beaver Av. we could see crowds of drunken undergrads screaming from their balconies. By the time we decided to head back home it was already 2 AM but it seemed like the party had just started for many. Canyon pizza on Beaver Av., the usual midnight food joint after the bars close, had a huge crowd of hungry 20 somethings around it. Most of them had just stopped for a quick bite and looked like they were heading to a house party with cases of beer in their hands. I totally envied their stamina and energy as for me the lights were already dimming out and it was waaay past my bed time.

Here are a few glimpses of the colorful Arts Fest:

Sand Art:

Children Having fun under the water buckets:

Live band at Allen Street:

Street Paintings on Heister Street: