Saturday's festival to showcase area arts, crafts

By Lynn Hotaling

Billed as a day of family fun, the focus of this year's Dillsboro street fair will be top-quality, regionally-produced arts and crafts, event organizers say.

Participating vendors may offer only their own work for sale, and most will demonstrate their specialty for festival-goers, said Mona Gersky, one of several Dillsboro merchants coordinating Saturday's (June 8) 18th Dillsboro Heritage Festival.

"(Artists and crafters) can't bring anything they haven't made," Gersky said.

This year's festival is a juried show, which means participating artists had to submit samples or photographs of their work for the festival committee's approval.

"We wanted what was sold to be handmade and to focus more on the heritage aspect," Gersky said.

Many shops in Dillsboro feature locally produced artwork and crafts, said committee member Brenda Anders, but the idea behind Saturday's event is to invite everyone to Dillsboro to enjoy the festival atmosphere.

"The visiting crafters will take the spotlight," she said. "On this day it's about the festival. We hope a lot of visitors will find their way to our shops, but the purpose is to invite people here to see the town."

"We're proud of our town, and this festival represents the hard work of Dillsboro merchants who want to give back to the community," Hepp said.

A number of local musicians will provide the sound track for the festival.

Catch the Spirit of Appalachia will present two performances of "The Majesty of Mountain Heritage," which will feature Wayehutta community's Fiddling Dills Sisters, Amanda and Sharon; bagpiper Josh Bulla; balladeer Emily Gaisler; storytelling and art by the Ammons Sisters, Amy and Doreyl; and Cherokee storyteller Myrtle Driver.

Located behind Enloe Marketplace, CSA will present shows at noon and 2:30 p.m.

Other local musicians who will perform Saturday include husband-and-wife duo Kelly and Kelly Timco; Andy LaTorre, who will play his glockenspiel; and Smoky Mountain Strings, husband-wife-team Steve and Mary Ann Lengyel, who play mountain music on fiddle and washtub bass.

New to the festival this year will be Cherokee hoop dancer Eddie Swimmer, who will perform several times during the day.

Saturday's festival will be centered on Front Street, which will be closed to traffic all day. Arts and crafts vendors will line the street. A variety of specialty food vendors will set up on tree-lined Church Street, which will also be closed to traffic.

Local history and information will be provided to area visitors at a booth sponsored by the Jackson County Chamber of Commerce.

Embodying Dillsboro's lengthy tradition of talented hometown artists and crafters are three town merchants who have recently received national recognition.

Original needlepoint designs, the collaboration of two Dillsboro women, are featured in the July issue of Stitcher's World, and local potter Brant Barnes will be profiled next week on Home and Garden Television.

"They produce some of the most exquisitely beautiful needlework designs on the market today," said magazine writer Michelle Howard of artists Linda Kotila (watercolor) and Margaret Cogdill (needlepoint). "Filled with light and tenderness, their work evokes a sense of serene wonder." The article describes how the two women formed a partnership to convert Kotila's Western North Carolina paintings into cross stitch designs by Cogdill.

"People were drawn to their exquisite designs - large works of art with perfectly rendered details, all enhanced with a carefully selected palette of threads and beads. The charts, drawn by Linda, are true adaptations of her paintings, and the threads and beads, selected by Margaret, give them exciting dimension and texture," Howard wrote.

Barnes, who specializes in functional stoneware and porcelain, will be included in Home and Garden's "Country Home" show scheduled to air Wednesday, June 12, at 9:30 p.m. and Thursday, June 13, at 12:30 a.m.

"It took almost six hours of filming for four minutes of air time," Barnes said about the Nov. 12 filming when a "whole truckload crew" converged upon his shop in Dillsboro.

The show's producers heard about Barnes's work through the efforts of Julie Spiro, Chamber of Commerce director, said Brant's wife, Karen.

Showcasing the traditional skills of talented artists like Kotila, Cogdill and Barnes was one of the reasons Dillsboro merchants began the Heritage Festival in 1985, said longtime shop owner Susan Leveille, who has been part of all 18 June events.

"We wanted to acquaint people with the town of Dillsboro, and back then there were not a lot of shops and Dillsboro was unknown," Leveille said. "Events were planned to attract people during the times when the town as not already busy and to showcase traditional skills - the Heritage Festival and Christmas Luminaire were started about the same time."

Dillsboro town board member and innkeeper Emma Wertenberger echoed Leveille.

The event was started as a "way to get visitors to town and let them see what was available and to promote area artists to the public," Wertenberger said.

A tourist Mecca since the 1890s, Dillsboro was chartered in 1889 and named for William Allen Dills, father of North Carolina's first woman state senator, Gertrude Dills McKee.

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