FORT SMITH — Hopes are high as the Fort Chaffee Redevelopment Authority prepares to launch its next round of monthly outdoor markets.
The Chaffee Crossing Farmers and Artisans Market will kick off its third season with a Hispanic fiesta-themed event May 13, according to the authority. The markets will run from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on the second Saturdays of May through October in the Chaffee Crossing Historic and Entertainment District at 7300 Ellis St.
Lorie Robertson, director of marketing for the authority, which oversees development of the Chaffee Crossing area, said the market is a community-building event that allows people to come together and both showcase their talents and sell their work. It also gives residents a chance to come to Chaffee Crossing and enjoy the sense of community that comes with the markets.
“It has such a warm, welcoming, friendly vibe to it,” Robertson said. “People just enjoy coming and staying. They enjoy visiting with the vendors, with the farmers, with the food service providers and listening to the live music, as well as just visiting with their neighbors, encountering people they haven’t seen in years or perhaps making new friends.”
The market’s focus is homegrown, homemade and handmade products; original art, designs and creations; and local musicians and performers, according to Robertson. The authority is interested in having more farmers participate.
Robertson said the authority expects this year’s markets to start strongly May 13. At least 60 vendors were registered as of April 3. Robertson believes it will “easily” have more than 100.
“We have a lot of repeat vendors, but we also have new vendors, and we have quite a few folks that are signing up to be season vendors because they see the value of the market,” she said.
Robertson said the first Farmers and Artisans Market in May 2021 featured 15 vendors and capped that initial season with about 120 vendors in October 2021. More than 150 vendors attended the most recent market in October, with the 2022 season seeing more than 250 total unique vendors participate, according to a news release.
One such vendor is Payton McMahan, owner of Payton’s Custom Designs in Chaffee Crossing. McMahan said 2023 will be her third year as a season vendor for the market, meaning she’s set to sell her wares at every event. Payton’s Custom Designs makes a variety of items, such as T-shirts, hats, cups and bags.
McMahan said she enjoys seeing the market grow. She believes her participation as a vendor has given her confidence.
“I don’t think that my business would be what it is today without the market, 100 percent, just because of how many people have come out and told me, ‘We came just to see your booth,'” McMahan said. “Things like that are what give small businesses the courage to keep doing what they’re doing, take that leap of faith every day because you never know how business is going to be with this world being the way it is.”
Each market will carry a specific theme. Robertson said the authority wants to showcase and celebrate the Hispanic community in the River Valley with its fiesta kickoff.
The authority is organizing the event with two senior students from the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith: Angel Fernandez and Daniel Lafuente.
“Dr. Kristin Tardif teaches a community leadership class at UAFS and she contacted us and asked if we could work with two students who are doing a capstone project, and they had the idea to do a Hispanic fiesta,” Robertson said.
Fernandez and Lafuente are both pursuing business administration degrees. They said Tardif told them and their classmates they would come up with some type of project to work with community leaders that would also involve the community at large.
Lafuente said Tardif connected him and Fernandez to Robertson after they thought about doing something in detail with the Hispanic community, which led to their involvement in the market. Fernandez said they didn’t realize the full scope of the event until Robertson explained it to them.
“It was definitely surprising,” Lafuente said. “It was a bit more than we probably anticipated, but looking at it now, if it works out the way we imagine it to, then I can see it being something really, really good for the community. I mean, it would help out a lot of people.”
Fernandez said one of his objectives with the Hispanic fiesta is to have the Hispanic community involved at Chaffee Crossing to increase the community’s awareness of the area. Lafuente said he wants the event to foster greater collaboration between Hispanic-owned businesses.
“I feel like there’s a lot of us out here, but we’re all just separated and doing our own thing, so it would be nice to see these businesses working together and helping each other, boost each other up and bring the Hispanic economy up in Fort Smith even more,” Lafuente said.
The fiesta will feature local Hispanic music, food trucks and other forms of entertainment and vendors, according to Fernandez and Lafuente. The musical groups slated to perform include Inseparables De San Luis and Fuego Cruzado, with Fernandez being part of the former.
Vendors have until May 5 to register for the kickoff event, according to the news release. They can apply online at chaffeecrossingfam.com or ask for an application by emailing [email protected] or calling (479) 452-4554.
Jesse Fenwick with Dallas Street Productions meets with fellow members of the Chaffee Crossing Farmers and Artisans Market committee, Wednesday, April 12, 2023, inside a conference room at the Fort Chaffee Redevelopment Authority office in Barling. The organization will kick off its third season of the Chaffee Crossing Farmers and Artisans Market on May 13. The markets will take place from 8 a.m. through 2 p.m. on the second Saturday of each month from May through October and will feature a variety of vendors and entertainment. Visit nwaonline.com/photo for today’s photo gallery. (River Valley Democrat-Gazette/Hank Layton)
Lorie Robertson, director of marketing for Chaffee Crossing, shows a poster to fellow members of the Chaffee Crossing Farmers and Artisans Market committee, Wednesday, April 12, 2023, during a monthly meeting inside a conference room at the Fort Chaffee Redevelopment Authority office in Barling. The organization will kick off its third season of the Chaffee Crossing Farmers and Artisans Market on May 13. The markets will take place from 8 a.m. through 2 p.m. on the second Saturday of each month from May through October and will feature a variety of vendors and entertainment. Visit nwaonline.com/photo for today’s photo gallery. (River Valley Democrat-Gazette/Hank Layton)None
Dates and Themes
The Chaffee Crossing Farmers and Artisans Market will take place on the following dates with the themes listed:
May 13: Hispanic Fiesta
June 10: My City is a Fort
July 8: American Pie
Aug. 12: Back to School Bash
Sept. 9: Rockin Good Time
Oct. 14: Oktoberfest
Source: Fort Chaffee Redevelopment Authority
RAPID CITY, S.D. – Bringing people together in support of Native American artists, Culture Shock debuted at The Monument with two parts, a fashion show and a music festival.
The fashion show featured seven Native American national and international designers with 60 models. There were also musical performances and speakers in between designers. One designer, Red Berry Woman, was a 2022 Grammy winner.
After the fashion show, the music festival started at 4 p.m. and featured 29 artists. The hosts for the music festival were Tonia Jo Hall and Leo Arguello of DeadEnd Records, featuring guest speaker Tiny Decory
“I’m excited to be here supporting Indigenous voices, Indigenous talent and Indigenous artists,” Cante Heart, supporter and attendee of Culture Shock, said. “I think it’s important to expose our talent and our voices throughout the Black Hills because this is our original, Oceti Sakowin territory, and this is where we are from. So it’s important to uplift Indigenous voices and talent and artists. So I’m here as a supporter.”
April 16, 2023, 12:00 PM HST
The deadline for comment submission to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs about the discussion draft of the Amendments to Respect Traditional Indigenous Skill and Talent Act of 2023, called the ARTIST Act, has been extended to May 19, 2023.
Comments may be submitted to [email protected].
The new act would update the Indian Arts and Crafts Act to support creative economies and strengthen enforcement of current law and protections against counterfeit competition for Native artists and their works.
Comments will be used to further inform the legislative process and serve as a resource for future discussions on updating the Indian Arts and Crafts Act.
The Committee will hold a virtual listening session, “The ARTIST Act: Updating the Indian Arts and Crafts Act,” about the discussion draft on April 26 at 2:30 p.m. ET.
Each year, thousands of visitors flock to northern Michigan for our beaches, our wineries, our trout streams, and our Nord…
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QUINCY (WGEM) – It was a dual celebration for the Quincy Art Center. Not only was Saturday World Art Day, but the center also celebrated their 100th anniversary.
Staff invited the public to a reception which featured a collection of 100 pieces from renowned local, regional and global artists which included pieces by Fritzi Morrison, Wayne Thiebaud and Pablo Picasso.
Experts were available to give a background on each piece for those who attended.
“World Art Day is a celebration in our community,” said the Quincy Art Center marketing director Kelsey Deters. “And Quincy is so lucky because we have such a rich art culture. Visual arts obviously, but all of the arts are huge in our community. We love that Quincy has embraced so many of the arts organizations in town.”
Quincy Art Center has another celebration coming up in May. They are calling all artists in the community to submit their work to go on display. For more information, click here.
Copyright 2023 WGEM. All rights reserved.
The heart and soul of any community newspaper is photography. Documenting news visually is a critical element to any publication, but it’s the everyday reflection of how we live that marks the strength of a community newspaper.
The Pilot has been blessed over the years to have community journalists who thrived at doing that. For almost 50 years, the name Glenn M. Sides graced much of our photography. Glenn could race out of the newsroom when the police scanner crackled with breaking news, but he was equally adept at just driving around and capturing everyday scenes across Moore County. Those scenes spoke volumes about how we lived, the pursuits we enjoyed, the sports we played, times of joy and sorrow. His photography over the years told the story of Moore County in ways that millions of words could not have captured.
If you’re looking for tips on how to shoot natural light portraiture, you might find some useful information in this video. If not, just watch a stunning photoshoot happen in one of the most beautiful countries in the world.
If I had to pick my favorite country I have ever shot in, it would be difficult. Trying to answer the question theoretically has me torn several ways, but one of the top contenders without a shadow of a doubt is Costa Rica. There aren’t many places I have been that have given off the sense that you’re in some tropical land quite as frequently and as strongly as Costa Rica. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to utilize the stunning light, natural beauty spots, and attractive locals for portraiture, and this video makes me feel all the worse for it!
Irene Rudnyk is an excellent portrait photographer and going behind the scenes on one of her shoots is always valuable insight. In this particular shoot, you can see Rudnyk work with only natural light, which can be tricky, particularly when the light is dappled and warped by trees and the ocean. Nevertheless, the shoot yields some superb images of local model, Maya.
Do you prefer to shoot natural light, strobes, or do you mix it up?
Frame.io has just announced new updates to its Camera-to-Cloud service: after two years of focusing on video workflows, frame.io is extending the service to still photography. Together with their partners FUJIFILM and Capture One, they have created a workflow for team collaboration on video, still images, and design files. Let’s check out what’s new.
If you are not familiar with frame.io or you even never heard about it, it’s been about two years since they released a Camera-to-Cloud workflow for video, film, TV, and content productions across the industry. Please check out a few of our articles about frame.io here and here, and make sure to watch an interview with Michael Cioni from frame.io here. Even the CineD crew is using frame.io for reporting news from the NAB Show 2023.
Photographers will be able to rely on a cloud-based RAW workflow with the new in-camera C2C integrations when shooting on FUJIFILM X-H2 and X-H2S cameras. Users can upload RAW, JPEG, and HEIF stills into frame.io directly while shooting.
The images are backed up in the cloud pretty much immediately and accessible through the web app, for clients or other collaborators to review. The FUJIFILM X-H2 cameras can also upload up to 8K ProRes clips to the cloud, for teams who are working with both stills and videos. Just keep in mind that this will also be an automatic backup service for everything you create!
The photography app Capture One is also integrated to further enhance your C2C workflow. Now you can share images directly between Frame.io and Capture One. That means it’s not necessary to be on-site with a photographer to evaluate what has been created. You can make comments on images and the photographer can view the shots in Frame.io, submit suggestions or make adjustments, then continue shooting.
There are also some new features that can make your print workflow more intuitive. Users will be able to upload and view RAW stills shot on FUJIFILM, Canon, Nikon, Panasonic, or Sony cameras. Thumbnails will appear in the correct native aspect ratio and Frame.io will automatically switch from sRGB to CMYK color proxies, so you can see the accurate color reproduction for work destined for print.
With every cloud service, there is always a legitimate concern about security. Therefore, Frame.io now features Watermark ID and Digital Rights Management (DRM) encryption. The new forensic watermarking adds an extra layer of security to your content. It embeds as an invisible watermark at a pixel level that can’t be obscured through screen recordings, external device recordings, or copying the video file. It also provides an asset ID code that can identify projects, teams, accounts, user location, and playback time.
If you are planning on heading to this year’s NAB Show, then you can see these new Frame.io updates in action directly at the convention center in Las Vegas. For more information and pricing, please visit Frame.io’s website here.
What do you think about Frame.io C2C workflows coming to photography? Do you think your next production can benefit from these new updates? Don’t hesitate to let us know in the comments down below!
