A Look Back at CityArts

Allison and Jordan brave the dog days of summer at the CityArts Celebration.

Guest blogger Lydia Regalado is an arts educator, crafter and blogger who writes about people who gather to make things.

The sun came out blazing after the storms, but that didn’t stop the crowds from coming out to CityArts to partake in the annual visual, performing and culinary arts celebration. Here’s a glimpse of what was seen, heard and tasted at this year’s festival. The streets of the Arts District in downtown Dallas were shut down and lined with artists’ booths, delicious food and drinks and museums waived admission prices for attendees to whet their artsy whistle and cool down.

Virginia and Clinton Randele audition for the Marriage Ref at CityArts.

Of course, I had to check out the steady stream of couples that came to audition for the upcoming NBC reality show Marriage Ref. The couple snapped above were celebrating their 10th wedding anniversary in Dallas. I guess we’ll just have to wait to see if any couples made it on the reality TV show.

The Children’s Discovery Center was the place to create art. Down by the Meyerson Symphony Center, several arts organizations had art performances and activities set up for kids. My favorite was the collaborative project “Artropolis” by Dallas Contemporary.

Katherine King shows off her creation at CityArts.

Under a white tent, throughout the weekend, a colorful paper city was erected with libraries, newspaper buildings, salons and museums, evoking the spirit of CityArts: community and creativity. Crowds gathered to watch international dance performances and hear a variety of musical genres and artists. The sights, sounds and smells definitely had an international flavor, and many festivalgoers were experiencing these senses for the first time. What was your favorite CityArts experience?

Tom Hendricks

What Dallas leaders don’t get is closing streets permanently would lead to this much fun permanently.
The best idea is to shut down Main Street to all traffic – traffic should not go through downtown anyway, it should go to downtown or around downtown. Then we would have our own “River Walk” It would connect downtown to Fair Park. And it would renovate Downtown, Deep Ellum and Fair Park.
City leaders seem to refuse the obvious, and the only reason I can see is that there is no specific developer that would gain from it. No developer is pushing influence. Instead it would help everyone. That’s usually something not heard of here.
New York City has started to try the idea of blocking out street traffic on city streets. Usually Dallas won’t do anything new unless its a re-new. Now we can ape NYC. We don’t even have to think innovatively – which seems tough for many here.
Ashlee McClelland

Lydia! I didn’t see you, and that’s too bad. It would have been fun. Of course, I was walking around in my orange shirt trying to recruit exchange student host families, so maybe you would have been embarrassed to walk with me.

Despite the heat, I thought it was really great, and wish, like Tom, that Dallas would have some permanent pedestrian areas where street vendors could set up on a regular basis.

A lot of the vendors were great, and I particularly enjoyed the performance by the Dallas Black Dance Theatre on Friday night. I went all three days and enjoyed the junky food and the music. It was fun. Well played, Dallas. Well played.