6th Annual Oregon City Festival of the Arts Oregon City’s Premier Art Event

By Lynda Orzen, OCFOTA Coordinator

Wow, just wow! What an amazing event this year! We had well over 3,000 visitors during the weekend. The parking lot was always full all weekend! Saturday morning we saw a constant stream of people entering the festival! Our artists gave the festival an average of 8.8 appreciation rating. Many said this festival had the best sales they’ve seen in years!

I’ll let them speak for themselves:

Well done everyone!! A great show, well organized and lots of visitors. This show continues to be a delight. We have enjoyed this event every year. Our thanks to you all for all your hard work and friendly faces

This was an amazing event and the anticipation for next year is already an exciting seed in my mind. Kudos to all of you wonderful folks and all your hard work.

Wow! I so appreciate the work of the OC Festival of the Arts Committee! You are super organized, your volunteers are the greatest, and your publicity is amazing!!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Thanks so much for the awesome show!!!! I had the best sales I’ve ever had at the event. So nice to see you and everybody again. I had a lot of my clients come and a lot of annual regulars who stopped in to buy bling.

You, the committee and all the volunteers were so very terrific! This is why I love this event. I hope you all get to take a well-deserved break.

Much Appreciation ~

Just a small example of the feedback from our artists. Truly heartwarming!

As the event coordinator, I would like to give kudos to our committee members who put in hours of planning to make this happen! Several members like Melody Bush were behind the scenes posting on Social Media daily. Yelena Shabrova kept all the applications and communications current. Ingrid Aubry used her magic creating our postcards, posters, banners, programs, and billboards for the event. Nancy Graham kept the financial information current along with those boring insurance details! Susan Woodworth signed up the music and food vendors, while being a vendor in the event and a television personality for our KATU commercial. Cathy Rowe manned the Silent Auction again this year and did her magic with the online bidding and gathering the auction items. Thank you to Tima Carlson and Soul Flags for hosting the Children’s Art activities. Lynne Collum created the artist booth signs and badges this year. Tamara Scott was the keeper of the key for the Storage Unit and always ready to help move supplies. Last but one of the most important committee chairs was Kerry Edwards who set up the volunteers for the festival. Kerry was invaluable and worked with me coordinating this event. She went above and beyond setting the volunteer schedules, she was my right hand in organizing the event! She always had a smile on her face even when trying to go in 2 directions at the same time!

Special thanks to our sponsors this year, World Heart, Citizens Bank and Double J Construction. If you have a chance to visit our sponsors, please thank them for their support.

Can’t forget to thank our Oregon City Tourism Department and Daniel Gehring for his support and getting us on KATU television for our interviews. The interview went out to the wider Portland community, and I believe increased our visitor count during the weekend.

Now the process begins for planning our 2023 Premier Art Event!

Lynda Orzen
OCFOTA Coordinator

Updated September 1st, 2022: Oregon City Festival of the Arts got Silver in the Best Festival in Oregon City from Readers Choice Awards through the Pamplin press!