Art in the Pearl gathers in the Park Blocks

A Labor Day weekend fixture in downtown Portland since 1997, the free festival offers booths for more than 100 artists, plus food, music, demonstrations, and hands-on activities.

• August 30, 2024

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• Bob Hicks

• News

It’s Labor Day weekend, which for thousands of people in and around Portland means one thing: heading downtown to the North Park Blocks to catch the booths and food and music and more of the free end-of-summer celebration Art in the Pearl.

As it has since 1997, Art in the Pearl will take over the North Park Blocks, on Eighth Avenue between Northwest Davis and Northwest Flanders streets, with enough booths to showcase the works of well more than 100 artists. This year’s hours are 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 31 and Sept 1, and 10 a.m.-4 p.m. on Labor Day: Monday, Sept. 2.

The volunteer-run Art in the Pearl calls itself a “Fine Arts & Crafts Festival,” and that’s part of its attraction: It considers “art” and “craft” part of the same family, and includes work by Northwest artists in a broad diversity of forms, including two- and three-dimensional mixed media, ceramics, digital art, drawing, fiber arts (including wearable art), glass, jewelry, metal, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, and woodworking.

In addition to the art booths (yes, you can buy the art) there’ll be plenty of world music, food booths, hands-on art activity areas for kids and adults (yes, the festival’s kid-friendly, and you can even bring your dog on a leash), and demonstrations by handweavers, sculptors, ceramicists, calligraphers, woodworkers, and metal artists. The weather looks good, too: mostly sunny, with highs forecast at 93 Saturday, 87 Sunday, and 76 Monday.

Left: Ken Hanson, Aurora & Amethyst Sea Fan, glass, Booth N92. Right: Carol Risley, Leather Pear Bag, Booth N77.

Art in the Pearl was begun as a nonprofit organization in 1997, partly in response to the demise two years earlier of the annual ArtQuake celebration, which had been a downtown Portland celebration of performing and visual arts for 19 years. Art in the Pearl has outlasted that and is still going strong — for one weekend every year, a free outdoor gallery for everyone.