By SHERRI SMITH BROWN

Artists and artisans from around the country travel to the North Georgia Mountains on Memorial Day weekend to participate in the annual Arts in the Park Festival in Blue Ridge.

For the 33rd year, the Arts in the Park Festival is taking place this weekend, May 23 –May 24, in historic Blue Ridge City Park in Blue Ridge at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.

Sponsored by the Blue Ridge Mountains Arts Association—which also sponsors the Wildlife Art Festival of North Georgia, the Blue Ridge Writers’ Conference, and the Southern Appalachian Artists’ Guild National Juried Show—the event draws about 15,000 people each Memorial Day weekend.

The festival boasts some of the finest arts and crafts in the southeast. You’ll find more than 150 booths with fine art, handmade crafts, and good food. There will be artists’ demonstrations and children’s art activities as well—and as you might expect, there will be plenty of fine mountain music. (more…)

By SHERRI SMITH BROWN

Mingling with the Royal Court, plus jousting, feasting, and shopping, are all part of the fun at the annual Georgia Renaissance Festival. 

I really enjoy the Georgia Renaissance Festival. In fact, the only bad thing about taking six-year-old Brianna is that I have to do what she wants to do, rather than all the things I want to do!

Once you enter the Festival grounds in Fairburn, you are immediately in a world where it’s natural to address others as “my Lord and my lady” or join in a Maypole dance with the forest fairies. You are part of a 16th-century European country faire where costumed visitors blend right in with the cast of nearly 1,000 costumed revelers and shop owners.

What can you do? Watch acrobats, swashbuckling sword fights, a children’s knighting ceremony, the Nickel Shakespeare Girls, or the Lipizzan Stallions perform dressage. There’s jousting, gypsy storytelling, birds of prey show, and plenty of Renaissance music and revelry. There is something constantly happening on the village greens and on each of the 10 stages scattered throughout the fairgrounds. (more…)