Fort Worth's Arts Goggle will fill 21 blocks of the city's Near Southside Saturday. The event features more than 800 local artists and 60 local musicians.
"This runs across the spectrum of the creative community," says Clifton Crofford, artistic director of SiNaCa Studios on Magnolia Avenue in Fort Worth. "It's all about local artists and celebrating the creative community of Fort Worth in a really awesome and unique way."
SiNaCa has been hosting events during Arts Goggle since opening at Magnolia and Washington Avenue 16 years ago.
"The team at the Near Southside is small but mighty," Crofford says. "They coordinate this one day festival to support these local artists and musicians."
Since the studio opened in 2010, Fort Worth has grown from 748,000 residents to more than a million. Crofford says Arts Goggle can introduce newcomers to the region to local artists and musicians. He says the Near Southside sets up booths so artists in similar media are grouped together. Each artist, musician and performer is from North Texas.
"It's special because there aren't a whole lot of organizations out there who show off emerging artists to the community," he says.
This year, the Near Southside is introducing "Arts Boggle" to showcase brick and mortar shops along Magnolia and South Main. Arts Boggle runs Friday night from 5 to 10 p.m.
During Arts Boggle, Melt Ice Cream will preview fall flavors and have a "build your own ice cream" station; Avoca Coffee Roasters will specialty drinks and live music; Ephemera Terrariums will have a pet costume contest.
SiNaCa offers classes on how to use glass as an artistic medium including glass-blowing and painting. Friday night, Crofford will also showcase the studio's "Pumpkin Patch" with glass-blown pumpkins and squash.
SiNaCa also has regular classes on how to use glass as an artistic medium. Crofford says Arts Goggle and regular classes can help build a community.
"It's experiential," Crofford says. "They remember that time and the people they were with. It's memory more than a thing."
In the next year, the studio will move to Downtown Arlington. Crofford says several UT Arlington students have already done work with SiNaCa.
"As an organization, we're at this growth moment," he says. "It's exciting, it's bittersweet in some regards, but we have a great partnership with UT Arlington and great partnership with Arlington ISD. The recipe is right; the environment is right. We have some ambitious plans to create a pipeline to introduce glass at an early age. We've done stuff with the school districts, we've done stuff with private schools and home schooling organizations. We've done stuff with school districts over North Texas and even all the way in Houston to get them inspired."
Crofford says that work with kids does not aim to simply draw them to glass-making. Instead, he says working with glass can show kids potential careers from art to engineering a sculpture to the physics of how to shape glass with heat.
He says businesses also rent the studio for team-building activities.
"This wonderful, collaborative process builds on relationships where we trust one another, communicate well together and become inspired by the science, physics or thermodynamics," Crofford says.
He says people who stop by during the Arts Goggle or company events can create memories about learning the craft with friends.
"If we take it from them and make it perfect like the ones in the gallery, it's not as meaningful of a memory than if it has a little wobble or a little special character," he says. "People come back over and over again and say, 'I really like this is crooked and unique and has my breath and my influence in it.' It's more meaningful at that point. It's not a perfect gallery-quality thing, it's something they made and can see themselves in."
The Near Southside will be setting up the Goggle during Arts Boggle Friday night. The Arts Goggle itself is Saturday from noon to 10 p.m.
A map of artists, musicians, places to park and transit options is available here.
