MOUNT VERNON — Those who attend the Mount Vernon Music & Arts Festival on Saturday night will have the opportunity to take home a piece of local history.
The auction for the inaugural ‘Festival Challenge’ will take place on the steps of City Hall at 7 p.m. This year’s challenge involved repurposing several unique items, including antique chairs, an old piano from Mount Vernon High School, and the five trees that were harvested from Public Square this spring.
The 20 community members who participated in the challenge produced a total of 43 items – everything from a handmade chess board and pieces to a hand-carved coffee table that resembles the viaduct in downtown Mount Vernon.
“Some of the stuff that they have (created) is phenomenal because it’s clean, crisp, using a completely foreign, new material on the wood,” Festival Co-Director Joseph Bell said. “It’s cool. It’s really cool.”
The Festival Challenge was originally slated to begin in 2020, after the MVHS music department donated its old piano and Bell obtained the chairs. But the COVID-19 pandemic squashed those plans, forcing organizers to roll those projects into 2021.
When the City of Mount Vernon’s Shade Tree and Beautification Commission determined this winter it would need to harvest five aging trees from Public Square in March, Mayor Matt Starr approached Bell with an idea.
“The mayor came to me and he said, ‘Joe, we have this wood.’ They don’t want to just give it away, they want to have a purpose for it … So he threw it to me, to say, ‘Joe, what can you do with it?’” Bell recalled.
“And I said, ‘Well heck, let’s put it into the challenge.’”
The trees were harvested March 13 by SOS Tree Service and Ghost Logging (all will be replaced, according to Starr), and the wood was cut into boards on the Square that day.
As the boards were being kiln-dried locally, Bell reached out to artists and community members from across Knox County to see if they’d like to participate in the challenge.
“They (were) free to create whatever they wanted to create …” Bell said. “So they (were) able to use their imaginations and creativity to, typically what’s referred to now as ‘repurpose’ – I don’t like ‘repurpose,’ I like the idea of just creating something new, something different from that same idea.
“But it’s just the format of, ‘Here is a thing, whatever that thing might be; what can you do with it? How can you problem-solve? What can you make that nobody can imagine?’”
The ready-to-use boards were turned over to Bell in May, and he summoned all interested parties to a warehouse where they were being stored. Participants had their pick of spruce, buckeye, and sweet gum wood. Bell said the mood was jubilant.
“They just went nuts – you know, what could they pick through and look at and use?” Bell said. “And you could just watch their imaginations right then, when they (saw) this bare piece of wood – this unclean wood.
“It was awesome just to see their imaginations (go), ‘Oh, I can do this; I can do this; I can do this.’ And then we have what we have, and it’s incredible.”
Aside from Dr. Richard Sprang, a local dentist whom Bell said does woodwork in his spare time, most of those who participated in the challenge were by no means professionals. They were simply community members – all from Knox County – who wanted to give it a shot.
“These are just mom-and-pop people that like to create stuff …” Bell said. “And that’s why I think it’ll be impressive for people to see, is you’ll see this very fine-crafted work and realize, ‘Oh, that was Larry from down the road. I didn’t know he did (wood)work. And it’s quality work.’ So it’s awesome to see that.”
The amount of time it took participants to finish each project varied, Bell said. One participant picked up his wood on Saturday and had one of his projects finished a week later. Others, due to the lengthy curing process and other variables, turned in their projects within the last week.
“It all goes to passion. What’s your passion? …” Bell said. “A lot of it is trial and error. What works? What doesn’t work? I like this process, so I’m gonna go with it. And then they create whatever the final piece would be.
“So really, it’s a labor of love, it’s a labor of compassion, because they get to manipulate something in a raw form and put it in a high-quality finished form.”
The finished products have been on display this weekend in the ballroom of The Grand Hotel. There are clocks, violas, bowls and chairs. There are tables, boxes, charcuterie boards and dishes. And there are original works of art, many featuring local designs, ready to hang on a wall or brighten up a desk.
All were created by local people, using historic local materials.
“I am always looking for high-quality work, in any kind of presentation – whether it’s stage music, visual performing arts,” said Bell, who has been the festival’s co-director alongside Trina Trainor since 2019.
“And this, in the visual arts, with what they created – it’s top-notch work.”
The wood projects in particular carry a sense of local historical significance. According to Starr, the buckeye tree harvested in March was planted in 1919, having overlooked the city’s downtown district for over a century. The other trees were “decades old,” Starr said, and had seen millions of sunrises and sunsets in the county seat.
By donating the harvested wood to the festival, Starr said he hoped the city could help extend these trees’ legacies in the community.
“I just thought it was a way of keeping those big shade trees alive through art,” Starr said, “and being able to have the artists make some money and the festival make some money and eliminate a risk for the community at the same time.”
Online bidding for the 43 projects in this year’s Festival Challenge has already begun. The in-person auction will take place Saturday night, before Phil Dirt & The Dozers take the Main Stage on Public Square.
Half of the proceeds will go toward the artists, and half will go toward the festival.
“I’m a very strong believer that an artist, in whatever they do, deserves to be compensated for that,” Bell said. “Now, if it’s a stipend, it’s a stipend. But I always think an artist is short-changed because there’s time, there’s passion, there’s materials, there’s creativity – and they need to be (rewarded) for it.”
Bell believes the historical significance of this year’s challenge adds value to the pieces up for auction. Those who bid highest, he said, will get to take home a piece of Mount Vernon’s history.
“I think it adds a sense of charm to it, because you’re owning a (piece) of history for this area that can never be taken away,” Bell said. “They’ve given it a purpose that’s different from its original intent – the life of the tree – and they’ve given a utilitarian sense of remembrance for it …
“It’s taking the nostalgia concept of what we have in nature here on the Square – that saw history in all the years past – and brought it to another purpose, to enjoy for whoever knows how long now.”
The Mount Vernon Music & Arts Festival continues Saturday and Sunday in downtown Mount Vernon. Click here for a full schedule of events.
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