The 43rd annual Arts in the Heart of Augusta Festival kicked off Friday evening and was in full swing by Saturday afternoon, with hundreds wandering through Broad Street from the Sixth through 11th Street blocks.
This year’s bazaar boasted over 170 artist and sponsor booths in tents camped along Broad and neighboring streets.
“Today’s been a fast day,” said artist Pixie Mag, who set up near the 10th Street exit, about Saturday’s turnout. “Yesterday was a little slow, but today’s been picking up like crazy.”
Her booth, The Pixie Mart, is the Augusta native’s festival extension of her online shop, selling handcrafted jewelry and bags, original art and temporary tattoos. Her most popular item for the day proved to be T-shirts with original art prints, sold out before mid-afternoon.
Another artist, Kaleb Scarborough, was set up nearby, selling his paintings alongside his friend James Keene, who recently opened an arts gallery and performance venue, The Nest, at 582 Broad St.
Scarborough says his works are a way of dealing with intense emotions, and many of his paintings are inspired by the philosophy of pioneering psychotherapist Carl Jung, and music of the alternative hip-hop group the Death Grips.
“I have this thing where I feel like I have a hard time valuing words, even my own words,” Scarborough said. “So the only way for me to speak and give it the weight it deserves is through something that I put a lot of effort into what I’m trying to say.”
Set up in one of the artists markets off Broad was a booth for Gather By the Ghost Light, a podcast launched by local playwright Jonathan Cook, featuring a series of audio plays.
Drawing the name from the old theatre convention of placing a single electric light—or “ghost light”—on stage when a theatre is otherwise closed and unoccupied, Cook began the podcast in 2020 amid the COVID pandemic.
“A lot of theaters on social media were posting pictures of their ghost lights,” said Cook, who has worked and performed for years with downtown theater Le Chat Noir. “And so when I saw that, I was like, ‘Well, I’m a playwright. I’ve written all kinds of plays…. How about I bring theater to people?’”
While the show is entirely produced and recorded in Augusta, it features short plays written by playwrights all over the world. After each season ends—there have been five so far—the scripts are compiled and made available in book form.
Along with getting the word out about the podcast, the tent also promoted “Stage Frights,” a live event where a troupe of voice actors will perform several short horror plays for Halloween season at Le Chat Noir on Oct. 12. As well, microphones were hooked up behind the tent for curious passersby who wanted to take a crack at voice acting.
“We’re competing with a stage of music, we’re competing with a loud generator,” said Cook, who plans to post the results of people’s brief excursions in the audio theatre on social media. “I don’t know how the final product is going to sound, but at least people are getting to experience it.”
The Arts in the Heart Festival will continue through 6 p.m. on Sunday.
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering business for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
