37th annual Fort Worth Main Street Art Festival kicks off Thursday
FORT WORTH — You can meet and buy artwork from hundreds of talented artists beginning Thursday at the MAIN ST. Fort Worth Arts Festival.
The 37th annual event is the largest arts festival in Texas and the third highest-rated in the entire United States. The festival also features a children's area, live music on two stages, and wine and beer tastings on 18 square downtown blocks.
Art is both and passion and a living for Danny Meisinger.
"I've been a potter now for about 40 years," he said.
Meisinger is one of more than 200 artists polishing their brushes and canvases for the four-day event.
"This is one of the top shows in the United States, so it's just great to be here," he shared. "It's a juried competition just to get into this show, so it's already like winning an award to be here."
Festival producer Jay Downie agrees.
"We've selected 213 of the best, of which about 23% are from the Texas area—over 10% are from local markets,' he said.
Food is another big draw of the festival.
"They'll be the standard fair food, which people love, like corn dogs, funnel cakes, roasted corn—but then we've got crepes, we've got vegan dishes," Downie shared.
Tanya Doskova is an artist from Phoenix who made the trip to Fort Worth.
"The festival has huge crowds. It's very well organized," she said. "We love the city crowds of Fort Worth and the reactions of people to my art."
"It's awesome coming to Fort Worth because it's a friendly town," Meisinger said. "I really like it. I'm from Kansas City, and it feels like home just down south."
He said preparation is key as he gets ready for a very busy festival.
"It's a lot of work as it goes throughout the year, but then an art fair, it doubles down. We'll put in 80, 85, maybe 90 hours this week," Meisinger said.
Artists from all kinds of disciplines, such as woodworking, metalworking and drawing, will be at the festival. It kicks off at 10 a.m. Thursday and continues every day through 8 p.m. Sunday.