The Jim Thorpe Art Weekend is a relatively new entrant into the community festival scene, yet an increasingly popular one. You’ll experience many of the distinctive things in Jim Thorpe – visual art, free music, culinary treats, headline shows at the Opera House, gallery openings along Broadway and West Broadway, artists demonstrations, and interesting lectures and workshops.
It’s also relaxed, lacking the rather frenzied pace of, for example, October’s Fall Foliage Festival. It turns out that May is an especially beautiful and unhurried time of year in Jim Thorpe.
You might consider a weekend stay at a local bed and breakfast, or at the Inn at Jim Thorpe, the newly-restored downtown Victorian-era hotel. Every guest who books a stay with a bed and breakfast gets a free ticket to hear local raconteur Jack Gunsser tell entertaining stories of Old Mauch Chunk. He dresses in costume and holds forth in the very appropriately historic Harry Packer Mansion.
Other activities include a lecture on Sunday afternoon by historian Bill Allison titled “The Art of Victorian Architecture,” and guided tours at the Asa Packer Mansion, the Mauch Chunk Museum, and the Old Jail. You’ll be able to combine art and history at a photography workshop with photographer Tom Storm, who knows the spots from which you might take your most memorable opuses of town.
The festival begins on Saturday, May 5th at 11 AM with a walking tour of studios and galleries. At the downtown Visitors Center is an information table as well as a sales booth for ticketed events. Pick up a visitor’s bag loaded with our brochure and walking tour guide, plus special offers redeemable throughout the historic district.
That evening we celebrate Cinco de Mayo at the Mauch Chunk Opera House with a performance by Marko Marcinko’s Latin Jazz Quintet. Directly across the street, an opening at the Dakota Ridge Gallery will present the deeply moving photography of Madascar’s Pierrot Men. The event is open to the public.
Sunday is a day for museums, art lectures, and art demonstrations. Stained glass artist Nic East will demonstrate how to make a stained glass window, then lead a tour through his casa d’art that features more than 30 stained glass doors and windows.
On Sunday, Stone lithographer Ron Chupp demonstrates the fine art of printmaking in his West Broadway gallery on Sunday from a stone he will prepare on Saturday. It’s an excellent chance to see how prints were made before the modern printing press.
For more information, visit here for the details on Jim Thorpe’s newest festival.
