The ARTsFEsT at Georgia Southern University

Welcome to Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Georgia.
This is my alma mater and home of the 27th annual ARTsFEsT!



ARTsFEsT is an annual festival celebrating the arts and art education through performances, exhibiting and demonstrating artists, and hands-on activities and games. ARTsFEsT features the Annual Battle of the Bands, Artists’ Market, Art Stops, a traveling foundry, and the Samato Dance Group. The festival brings hundreds of artists and over 6,000 visitors to Georgia Southern University’s campus each year.



Beads for Life Organization

ARTsFEsT ‘09 hosted a bead party to benefit BeadforLife, a non-profit organization that supports community development projects in health, education, employment, and housing to the impoverished in Africa. Vibrantly colored necklaces, bracelets and earrings are handcrafted by Ugandan women from recycled paper into beautiful beaded jewelry. Not only works of art, this jewelry is a source of income, food, medicine and hope for the artists and their families. The beaders are women living with HIV/AIDS as well as refugees displaced by a devastating civil war in northern Uganda. The BeadforLife organization works to “eradicate poverty one bead at a time.”

My lil' sweety making a necklace for me...




SamaTo African Drum and Dance Ensemble


SamaTo, which means "You Have to See It" in the Susu tribal language of Guinea, West Africa, describes the exuberant performance by dancers and musicians from Guinea, West Africa who are devoted to sharing their musical culture and traditions of West Africa. The performance included rhythmic dances, indigenous songs and cadenced drumming traditional of West Africa.

My son's painting depicting the SamaTo Dancers and their drums




Sculpture Trails Traveling Foundry

Visiting artists from Sculpture Trails, a traveling foundry, gave participants a carving block and a plethora of carving tools. My son decided he wanted to carve a picture of a tree. Trees seemed to be on his mind that day. As we carved, the furnace warmed up to the temperature it needed to melt aluminum — 1400 degrees! Pouring takes a few minutes and then it takes about 20 minutes for it to cool down enough to be handled with gloves. Once it was cool our art project was removed from it's casing and filed down on the sides to remove the rough edges. Then a patina was added to bring out the detail in our artwork.

Here's our tree!



I had only planned on us dropping by, checking it out and heading home but there were so many fun things to do for the whole family. It was a great time to learn about art, be together and have tons of fun! So needless to say, I got none of my studio work done that day but I still managed to be creative all while spending precious time with my family. It doesn't get better than that!



Hope you've enjoyed your visit to Statesboro, Georgia!