Date Of Event: June 6-8

Location: Salem, MA

Summary: Artists from all over the Salem (MA) area showed off their artistic abilities at the 17th annual Salem Arts Festival.

As summer is winding down, sadly, it’s true, I thought it was the perfect time to post photos from the annual Salem Arts Festival in June of this year! Ok, I should have posted them earlier. But, it’s been a busy summer! And I plan to show off more photos from my busy summer soon!

The 17th annual arts festival featured art and artists from all over the Salem, MA, area.

The theme for this year’s festival was Hissstory. As the sign below states, the hissstory project repurposed banners from previous events in the city. These repurposed parts were used to form a very long snake! Citizens of Salem were encouraged to create their segments of the snake which was displayed on Front St; the staging area for the performers. Recycling, or repurposing, at its finest.

The festival ran from June 6th to 8th. But, because of the rainy weather, I only attended on the 8th of June.

Since there was so much art and entertainment at the festival, I have decided to post this blog post in 2 parts. This post will include the popular “Mural Slam” as well as some of the dancers and musicians at the festival.

Without a doubt, the main event of the festival is the mural slam. Twelve artists painted uniquely creative works of art.

The murals weren’t finished until later in the day after I left. So, I stopped by the next weekend to photograph them when they were done. Plus it’s fun seeing how some of the murals evolved. At least it’s fun for me. Maybe I need to get out more.

Paige Doyle-Elwell

Howie Green

Colomba Klenner

Jess “Pickles” Clark

Max Pro

Daphne Powers

Bruce Orr

Naijah Nine

Caoin O’Durgy

Sarah Egan

Jennifer Wackerle

Bobbie Smith

There were additional murals and other works of art that were not part of the mural slam. The elephant was made by Polyvios Christoforos for the 2018 Salem, MA, mural slam. Bonus points if you can name all of the 4 buildings in the painting with the homes.

But, the art wasn’t just the murals and in the old town hall. There were also musicians and dancers. Matt Savage Groove Experiment kicked off the festivities on the second day of the festival. Matt is the keyboard player and composer for the band.

One of the more interesting and creative parts of the festival were the dancers. There were tap dancers.

But, the most interesting dancers were the interpretative dancers.

I hope you join me in part 2 of my blog post from this event which I will post soon!