Art, Music, Food, and Bad Tattoos

Every year, in the spring, Dallas is host to the three day Deep Ellum Art Festival. We try to go every year. I like to refer to it as the Deep Ellum Festival of the Arts, Music, Food, and Bad Tattoos.

I wasn’t able to get down there on Friday or Saturday, but managed to carve out a couple hours around noon on Sunday. The sky started to spit on the ride down and the clouds off to the west were looking ominous, so I had to scurry through the throng a little faster than usual.

There were a lot of artists there – more than usual. I was a little disappointed, though. Usually the Deep Ellum Festival of the Arts, Music, Food, and Bad Tattoos has a healthy selection of oddball, interesting, and edgy art for sale – but it seems to have been taken over by the usual selection of folks that haunt springtime festivals all across the heartland. There is one sculptor that I look for and he was there with his usual flair (tomorrow’s entry) but otherwise, there wasn’t much to catch my eye for sale.

Now, as far as the folks walking around, that was another story. That was fun.

The festival stretches in a double line of canvas booths lining Main Street for about a mile. It is now growing down a handful of side streets too.

One nice thing about an arts festival is the chance to meet and talk to the artists themselves.

A wide variety of stuff is for sale.

There is a lot of food at the ends - Por Ejemplo - the King of Candy Apples

At each end of the main drag were large stages. This guy was drawing a band - though they had already finished.

Plenty of hipster doofuses to keep things lively.

This woman was waving a turkey leg out of her food trailer. When someone came up to buy one, she said, "Let me get you a fresh one hon, this is my demo model, I've been waving it out this window for hours."

A guy eating a turkey leg being stalked by a woman in a "Reality is a Prison" shirt.

Smaller musical stages were set up out on the end of the side streets.

An artist and his creation.

I really liked these little sculptures... but you'd have to by all of them to get the same effect.

19 responses to “Art, Music, Food, and Bad Tattoos”

Reading your post, I wish I lived in Dallas. There always seems to be so many interesting things to do!

interesting color commentary. “doofus hipster,” “turkey leg demo,” followed by “reality is prison” shirt… and how funny “maggiemyklebust” commented the same thing that you commented on my page about the art festival! life imitates art imitates life.

Looks like a real interesting place to be 🙂

Maybe edgy art is like Instagram. Everything looks the same. I lived in Deep Ellum when it had an edge, now it’s try too hard to be cool.

MD Photography says:

April 11, 2012 at 9:09 am

Wow. That’s an interesting observation about instagram. And so true.

Reply
- Ray Laskowitz says:
  
  April 11, 2012 at 9:27 am
  
  I wish I was the first person to say that.

I really like your people pictures — you have a knack for just catching people as they are, turkey legs and all!

The Turkey Leg Demo is perfect! The popularity of the turkey leg as a snack mystifies me – it reminds of me medieval kings, and of course, the plague. Great work you have here…

I can feel the fun through the photos 🙂 I miss having this kind of vibe in the neighborhood.

“Plenty of hipster doofuses to keep things lively.” ….HAHAHAHA

I live in Ann Arbor, MI and we have an Art Fair every summer that overtakes the whole town. This looks a lot like that Fair, and I’ll bet a lot of the same artists show there. It’s always a fun time! 🙂

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