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By Donna Harris
Cherokee Tribune Staff Writer
The next two weekends promise to be filled with fun and entertainment as Cherokee County hosts three spring arts and crafts festivals.
Cherokee County Indian Festival and Mother's Day Pow Wow
Kicking off the festival season this weekend will be the 19th Annual Cherokee County Indian Festival and Mother's Day Pow Wow at Boling Park in Canton.
Presented by Rolling Thunder Enterprises, the festival is staged each Mother's Day weekend to celebrate all mothers, including Mother Earth, and to educate the public and dispel myths about the American Indian.
"It's an eco-cultural gathering," organizer Chipa Wolfe said, noting the event has become a tradition for a lot of families. "It's obviously to celebrate our geographical, historical arena and the history of our area. It's to create a cultural Renaissance for those displaced and to bring them back home. And on the other side, it's to celebrate our mothers, with our environmental mother, the Earth."
People who attend the pow wow enjoy communing with like-minded individuals in a family-oriented atmosphere, Wolfe said.
"There are not as many events that are family-oriented it seems anymore," he said.
The pow wow is loaded with what Wolfe calls "edutainment value."
"Not only do we entertain our guests, but hopefully they learn a little bit about not only Americans, but Native Americans," he said. "The thing about American peoples is we're more diverse than some of our biggest continents. We've got so many different tribal entities that exist in North America, over 500 recognizable tribes."
The festival will feature more than 50 artists and crafters selling their work, as well as vendors cooking up native foods like buffalo burgers, Indian fry bread, gator tail, Indian tacos, roasted corn and Pima wraps.
American Indians from across the United States, Mexico and Canada will perform colorful intertribal dances, and the Aztec dance company also will perform. Dance competitions will be held throughout the weekend.
Warriors on horseback will fight one another in a mock battle in the traditional sneak-up dance, and Ray Pena will once again bring his Flight of the Raptor bird program to the pow wow.
"He's very, very popular and one of the most profound birds of prey flyers out there," Wolfe said.
Anthro-technician Russell Cutts will demonstrate the art of fire-by-friction while primitive skills demonstrators will teach guests about weapons, flint napping, tipi construction, cooking within the earth, hide tanning and more.
Festival-favorite Thunder, a 2,200-pound buffalo that is ridden daily, will once again be on hand.
"I will ride Thunder if I get enough people over there who want to see blood," Wolfe said, laughing. "I love the juice. Adrenaline is my drug of choice."
Joining Thunder this year will be a new addition to the festival, Tank, a 5-month-old bull bison that will be requesting signatures for the Buffalo Field Campaign to stop the slaughter of wild buffalo in Yellowstone National Park. Guests can listen to native storytellers, walk through a living tipi village and meet Little Big Mountain as he presents a hands-on living history program on the Plains Indian culture.
Also featured at the festival will be the mother-daughter duet Cherokee Rose and Silena, Jim Sawgrass and his Muscogee Creek encampment, Nammy Award-winning flutist Tommy Wildcat and a Paiute fiddler.
Wolfe said around 7,500 people attended last year's event, and he would love to top the 10,000 mark this year.
"Boling Park is beautiful, but parking is a problem," he said. "We should be doing 30,000 like the Renaissance Festival, but we can never be that big because of parking."
Ball Ground Heritage Days Festival
Ball Ground will be full of clowns next weekend as the sixth annual Ball Ground Heritage Days Festival pays tribute to Emmett Kelly Sr., one of the most famous clowns in the world.
The festival, scheduled for May 17 and 18 at Calvin Farmer Park off Old Dawsonville Road, will feature 40 to 50 arts and crafts and food vendors, entertainment and children's activities.
On Saturday, a parade featuring Kelly's daughter, Ball Ground resident Monika Kelly, as the grand marshal will wind its way down Gilmer Ferry Road to kick off the festivities, and the evening will conclude with a free Movie Under the Stars at the park.
Heritage Days committee member Tim Cavender said the committee thought it was important to recognize Kelly -- who performed with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus for years and worked on stage and screen with such Hollywood legends as Clark Gable, Lucille Ball, Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Carol Burnett and Red Skelton -- since his daughter has been a longtime resident of the city.
"For the most part, people on the Heritage Days committee knew how popular Emmett was back when we were kids, especially those of us who had the opportunity to see him quite a bit on television," he said. "Since Monika is a resident of Ball Ground, we thought it was sort of a natural avenue to go with. What better way to celebrate somebody in our own hometown who had a father who has such a great legacy?"
Since the parade is honoring a world-renowned clown, it will include clowns from as far away as Alabama and South Carolina.
"The response from the clowns has been tremendous," Cavender said, noting many of them are excited about meeting Ms. Kelly and getting her autograph. "A lot of clown units coming here are from other states. And Emmett was also a Shriner so we have a lot of Shriners coming. To steal Walt Disney's line, this is probably going to be the happiest place on earth."
Also participating in the parade will be the Cherokee High School marching band, antique cars, beauty queens, floats, police units and honor guards.
"It's a fairly large parade," he said. "I feel it will be the largest one we've had."
After the parade, festival-goers can shop for arts and crafts, enjoy traditional festival foods and watch entertainment by The Partin Family, the Barker Brothers, The Bluegrass Pickers, Lynn Ensley and Lyndsey Brooke. The entertainers will be performing both days.
Ms. Kelly, whose mother, Evi, is coming up from Sarasota, Fla., to join her at the festival, will have a booth set up to sell lithographs and other items featuring her dad and to sign autographs.
On Saturday at dusk, guests can settle down on a blanket in the park for a free showing of the 1952 Academy Award-winning movie "The Greatest Show on Earth," starring Charlton Heston, Jimmy Stewart, Betty Hutton and Kelly.
"They can enjoy a night out of fun and enjoy a classic movie with Emmett Kelly," Cavender said, noting Ms. Kelly will host the event.
He added last year's festival crowd was "probably a couple of thousand" people, "but we're expecting a much bigger crowd this year."
Canton Festival of the Arts
The fifth annual Canton Festival of the Arts is adding an environmental element to its fine-arts show this year.
The festival, scheduled for May 17 and 18 in downtown Canton, will feature an artists market, food, an all-ages play area, Camp Imagine activities, musical entertainment and the Serenity Gardens.
"We're excited about the show," said Co-Chairwoman Judy Bishop of Canton. "It's a fabulous, fabulous show."
Sponsored by the Cherokee County Arts Council and the Canton Lions Club, the juried festival raises money to benefit needy children in the county.
"The Lions Club has many projects like collecting eyeglasses and remaking them and distributing them," Ms. Bishop said. "The arts council, we take the money we make and use it to support scholarships for children who might not be able to afford our art camps."
The artist market will feature 50 to 60 fine-arts exhibitors, including two well-known watercolorists, award-winning Elly Hobgood of Canton and nationally acclaimed artist Brenda Tustian of Ball Ground.
"Elly was our best-of-show award winner last year," Ms. Bishop said.
The market also will include oil paintings, jewelry, pottery, woodturners and photography.
In the Serenity Garden area, about 20 vendors will be selling locally grown and organic produce and flowers, locally collected honey, infused oils with natural herbs, handmade soaps and lotions and canned jellies, jams and sauces.
This year, they've added to the garden a speakers' tent where local gardeners will give talks and demonstrations on the "Go Green" theme and native gardening between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. both days.
Nationally published gardening expert Pamela Crawford of Canton will explain what plants grow best in this area, how to conserve water and other natural resources through container gardening, how to use rain barrels and how to create rain gardens. She also will be autographing her books.
Other speakers include beekeeper B.J. Weeks and Cherokee County Master Gardeners.
The play area will feature free hands-on art projects for kids at the Camp Imagine booth, a clown, inflatables, batting cages and more.
The Cherokee County Historical Society will offer tours of the Historic Marble Courthouse, including the courtroom and third-floor jail.
No festival would be complete without foods like barbecue, popcorn and cotton candy or live entertainment.
Last year's festival drew about 5,000 people, "but we're expecting it to be more than that" this year, Ms. Bishop said.
dharris@cherokeetribune.com
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