Tara Brickell Brings The World to Denver With the Cherry Creek Arts Festival
PHOTOGRAPHED BY ESTHER LEE LEACH
WRITTEN BY ANNIE BLOJ // CULTURE & STYLE EDITOR
Every year, the Cherry Creek Arts Festival brings nationally and internationally acclaimed artists together for a celebration of creativity, education, and interaction. This year promises to be a spectacular event, filled with ways to engage in all aspects of creativity including visual, culinary, and performing artists. Not only does the festival gather the top creatives from many different disciplines, but it also energizes Cherry Creek and highlights the vibrancy and spirit of the neighborhood. We are so excited to speak to Tara Brickell, CEO and Executive Director of Cherry Arts about the Festival and what to expect this year.
Annie Bloj: Tara, can you share the history of the Cherry Creek Arts Festival, and how you became involved?
Tara Brickell: CherryArts has been a leader in Colorado’s art and culture industry for over three decades. Since our inaugural Cherry Creek Arts Festival (CCAF) in 1991, we’ve transformed Denver streets and brought thousands of juried artists and several million community members of all ages together to engage with visual, performing, and interactive art experiences.
I initially joined the CherryArts team early on as an intern after college. Gaining that perspective helped me understand the organization and the years that followed showed me how I could best contribute. Once I began interacting with artists daily (when I was Visual Arts Director), I enjoyed getting to know them and learning about how they made a living as an artist. The more I learned, the more I realized what an authentic and courageous lifestyle it is. When I became executive director and CEO in 2015, I had already spent more than 15 years helping both the festival and the organization grow. It felt like a natural next step and at the same time provided me with new challenges as a leader. Even in my role today, I am most passionate about arts education and artists, and the genuine creative connection that happens when someone experiences art.
AB: The Festival receives over 2,000 applications and has to narrow down the group to 250 artists. How does the jury go about making the tough decision on who to accept?
TB: Because we look at our events as a way to support the artists as individual entrepreneurs and take out any barriers between artists and their patrons, we start by trying to recruit those from all walks of life and mediums of art. We hire five new jurors each year to provide a fresh perspective, which allows the curated group of exhibitors to feel new year-to-year. Over three days, the jury views each artist's set of five images projected simultaneously. It is a blind process where jurors have access to images and the artists’ statements and no other identifying information. A well-balanced show of artistic excellence, quality, creativity, and overall impression of original handcrafted work created by the artist is the criteria for selection — we work to cultivate viable options for artists to create and sell their work to the 150,000 visitors the festival attracts per year and last year generated $4.2 million in art sales. Because more than 2,100 artists apply, CCAF is one of the most competitive shows of its kind in the country.
AB: One of the main goals of the Festival seems to be education and community building. What impacts have you seen firsthand come from this initiative?
TB: As a nonprofit, offering signature community events is only one piece of our work: We also execute statewide education and outreach programs year-round. The festival has always been and remains free to attend. We know our event engages audiences who may not feel as comfortable in galleries or may not connect that they can buy work from an artist whose work also hangs in museums or public collections.
The CherryArts vision is to enrich lives through arts education and experiences so that all have access to arts and culture. Our tagline “Art for everyone” means equity. It means culture. It means investing in future artists and future art buyers. Proceeds from the festival, through sponsorships and merchandise sales, for example, fund grants that impact over 40,000 students in schools across the Front Range through our Art Kits, Student Art Buying, Mobile Art Gallery, and Art Cart programs.
AB: How do you come up with new and innovative ways to re-imagine the festival every year?
TB: I don’t think there’s any organization that won’t mention COVID as both a roadblock and an opportunity for innovation. In recent years, even beyond the pandemic, we’ve also seen a lot of construction and development in Cherry Creek, so some of the imagineering comes directly from needing to be clever about situational challenges. But the festival has deep meaning for both the neighborhood as well as the larger Metro Area and we take our stewardship of this important community event seriously.
Beyond those more obvious obstacles, we’re an arts organization — creativity is at our core. We know dynamic programs stimulate ideas and inspire collaboration. We can find inspiration and ideas in a myriad of places within the arts and culture realm as well as unexpected places, like the tech sector or social media. It is part of our ethos to remain dedicated to promoting challenging and forward-thinking work in the arts. Innovation can sometimes look like creative risk-taking, but it can also mean encouraging the exchange of ideas between viewers and makers alike.
AB: What are you most excited about for this year's Festival? Can you share the dates and important information so that our readers can make their plans?
TB: We are thrilled to be back in the beautiful Cherry Creek North neighborhood this year July 1st – 3rd. And I’m always the most excited about welcoming 250 creators from all over the country to show their new and innovative work. They work all year to create art and we work hard to create the right environment for them to succeed. We love hosting them, we love supporting them within the art eco-system and we delight in seeing what happens when people meet the artists, really learn about what they do, and then become comfortable buying, owning, and collecting artwork.
AB: Tara, thank you so much for your dedication and leadership through your work for CherryArts. The Cherry Creek Arts Festival is always a highlight of the summer, I can’t wait to check out all the world-class artists that you and your jury have selected to participate.
CherryArts: @cherryarts