Allen West Art Festival will take place June 8-9

BUFFALO, NY — You know festival season is in full swing when it’s time for the Allen West Art Festival. It’s this weekend, June 8 and 9, and on Tuesday we met with the festival presidency to find out what to expect this year.

“We’re very excited about the festival. This year we’ll have 120 artist vendors and about 10 food vendors, so we’re a little bigger than last year,” said Josh Wilson, president of the Allen West Art Festival.

This is Josh Wilson’s third year chairing the Allen West Art Festival.

“This year we went back to our original footprint. So we’ve been disrupted first by COVID for a few years, and more recently by construction on Allen Street. Construction on our Allen Street is completely complete,” Wilson said.

Wilson says the current state of the street, after construction, is perfect for the art festival.

“Last year we did it for the first time with the new streetscape. We got totally positive feedback from our artists, so that seems to be positive. It just puts a little glimmer in the “the whole festival,” said Josh Wilson.

We spoke with Wilson about the difference between Allen West and the Allentown Art Festival which is also happening this weekend.

“They’re bigger than us, they’re a little more fine arts focused, our festival is a little more open to the types of crafts and the types of vendors that we have. More affordable items can be found in our festival. You know, they’re a little different in character, but they’re very similar, and we have total respect for the Allentown Art Festival. They do a great job,” said Josh Wilson.

And he says it has a huge impact every year on local businesses in Allentown.

“We get about 100,000 visitors to the neighborhood, people get to see Allentown, you know, sometimes we see negative news, whatever, I lived here for twenty years, we love Allentown, we love to show off our neighborhood and we I love showing off our businesses,” Josh Wilson said.

If you come this weekend, you can expect to see everything from pottery to photography to all kinds of food vendors.

“My favorite thing about the festival is seeing the artists come back year after year. Over time, it’s a lot of the same faces, and you see their art over the years and, you know, it changes a lot. little, but it’s just kind of a community of artists, like seeing all these people who, this is their passion, right, like this is what they work on, often in their personal time? , it’s a side gig for them, and that’s where they get the chance to really shine,” Josh Wilson said.

And it’s the biggest fundraiser of the year for the Allentown association.

“We’re one of the oldest historic preservation districts in the country, and this organization has worked very hard both to preserve the character of neighborhoods, so thinking about historic preservation, but also doing things around safety and grow businesses and, you now, I’m just building a sense of community for the people that live here You know, we kind of have our unique identity as Allentowners, and so the Allentown Association is really the key. of that,” Josh Wilson said.