18th Annual Arts & Musical
Arts Festival, Events No Comments »For the 18th consecutive year, Edgewater’s Arts and Music Festival will again be located along the Shadyside section of Old River Road.
It is the borough’s most popular cultural event and it returns as a free celebration of the arts on Sunday, September 13, 2009 (Rain Date 9/20/09).
The day long festival includes a fine arts, crafts, sculpture and photography competition that is professionally juried, plus the popular People’s Choice category in which visitors to the festival cast their votes. The five Best of Show awards total $2,600.
At the Festival, there will be live music and other entertainment all day on an outdoor stage. Six restaurants will be open and food will also be served outdoors.
Across River Road, in Edgewater Commons, the Vintage Automobile Show will participate in the Festival for the fifth time, organized and hosted by the Edgewater Cultural and Historical Committee.
Since 1998, the Borough of Edgewater has closed the Shadyside section to traffic so visitors can stroll freely on Old River Road. Free shuttle busses transport them to and from Edgewater Commons Shopping Center, for the auto show and free parking.
According to Neda Rose, founder and president of the Edgewater Arts Council that sponsors the annual festival, for the last few years attendance has averaged an aggregate 2,500 visitors during the seven or so hours before the sun goes down, the tents are folded and the caravan of cars moves out of Thompson Lane.
“That would be more than the 280 who came to our first show, in Veterans Field,” Rose said. She recalls that the Arts Festival outgrew this location mostly because there weren’t enough parking spaces. Shadyside has a large municipal parking lot immediately north of the festival line — and the big Edgewater Commons lot across River Road provides ample parking space because most of the stores are closed on Sunday.
The Edgewater Arts Council is a non-profit, non-partisan, private organization of volunteers, dedicated to broadening awareness of visual and performing arts and crafts. In addition to their own projects, the local group has supported others with contributions, co-fundraising — and by showing up.
The Edgewater Arts Council also sponsors concerts and other artistic events. The Arts Council established a gallery at the Community Center, to display indoor art, and introduced outdoor art with three sculptures it donated to the borough which sited them in public places around town. One of them is on Thompson Lane, at the entrance to the Arts Festival.
Support for the Arts Council traditionally comes from commercial and private benefactors, advertising in Festival Program Books, on banners and from other fundraising projects. The Best of Show award is traditionally donated by the Municipality of Edgewater, New Jersey.
Additional funding is made possible in part by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Department of State, through grant funds administered by the Bergen County Department of Parks, Division of Cultural and Historic Affairs.
