BETHEL — The Mahoosuc Arts Council will host its 24th annual Bethel Art Fair from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, July 6, at the Bethel Common, collaborating for the first time with The Bethel Inn Resort.
Aranka Matolcsy, executive director of the council, said there will be 63 booths representing more than 80 artists in several genres, including oil, pastel, watercolor, pen and ink, photography, woodworking and metalsmithing.
There will also be live entertainment, including a puppet show at 9 a.m., a bluegrass performance by Abby Goldberg and Amalia Segiel at 10 a.m., a modern dance performance by Debi Irons of the Art Moves Dance Project in Norway and a harp performance by Conni St. Pierre.
Matolcsy said it’s exciting to have the collaboration between the council and The Bethel Inn Resort.
“It’s a big deal for us this year,” Matolcsy said. “Two organizations, a nonprofit and a business, working together for a mutual benefit. For us, that’s the biggest deal.”
The resort will celebrate its 100th anniversary this weekend with fireworks and live music. It will also host a vintage car parade from 3 to 8 p.m. from Railroad Street to the lawn of inn, and a fashion show from 6 to 8 p.m. at The Bethel Inn Resort Conference Center. It will feature outfits from each decade of the inn’s history, with the help of the Mahoosuc Arts Council.
The outfits are donated by members of the community, as well as the Bethel Historical Society, Matolcsy said.
“We have a lot of people who volunteered to model the clothing for us, including poet Richard Blanco and his partner, Mark Neveu,” Matolcsy said. “There’s musician Jewel Clark, fine artist Veronica Cross, who is also the artistic director of the event, Landon Fake, the director of Mahoosuc Pathways, and many more. A lot of people came together to model the clothing.”
Tara Ingraham, chairwoman of the Mahoosuc Arts Council, will be the emcee for the show.
Fashion show tickets are $15 and proceeds will go toward the Mahoosuc Arts Council.
Registration for the car parade is also $15.
Matolcsy is currently in the middle of her fifth year as executive director of the council. It’s a “fabulous organization,” she said, with a council that “understands the extreme value of the arts in the community, and its cultural and economic importance.
“Our community has a tremendous altruistic spirit,” she said. “Most people I know who volunteer here are volunteering for more than one group. There’s never a shortage of new ideas.”
For more information, call 824-3575.
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