Are you ready for another Fountain Festival weekend?

I’m anxious to see if there are any new talents being displayed this year. I do know of one and I’ll probably help him in his booth. My good buddy, Frank Kainrath, will be displaying and hopefully selling his photography work.

He had been a professional photographer in his younger years in Southern California. In fact, he shot Carl Sagan’s wedding. Some of you may remember him as the host of the PBS Nova series years ago.

After moving to Fountain Hills, he was in the computer business. He retired six years ago and moved with wife Janie to Costa Rica. There, he started playing around with a new digital camera. With his background of computers and photography, it was only natural that he would launch a new career in digital images.

His portfolio of photographs is splendid. He does all of his printing on canvas and is very particular how each print comes out. His subjects are mainly Costa Rica and its people. He also has an interesting array of images of the people of Guatemala.

His booth is near Chase Bank, just west of Verde River Drive.

I understand the Chamber is expecting another big weekend with more than 200,000 people expected over the three days.

I was going through some of our early-day editions researching for Jerry Miles’ history project when I ran across the story about the first Fountain Festival of Arts & Crafts.

The front-page headline of the Nov. 20, 1975 edition proudly stated, “4,000 in park for two-day art festival.”

As it is today, the festival was sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce.

A business woman named Mary Read served as coordinator of that first festival.

There were 128 artists from several states. They were situated in 10 red and white striped tents and 127 booths.

Featured artist was Earl MacPherson, who first made a name for himself in the art field by painting pinup girls for cigarette calendars during World War II. After appearing in this show, the Prescott artist became a regular in Fountain Hills for about the next five winters.

Several of his paintings depicting historical scenes in the lower Verde River Valley are exhibited in the River of Time Museum.

Fountain Park was the site of the fair that year and would remain there until 1978 when rain washed out the entire weekend. The artists were invited back the next weekend and the displays were set up on the Avenue of the Fountains. The artists and Chamber officials actually liked that setting better and that is where the festival remains to this day.

In addition to the arts and crafts fair, there were other activities held in conjunction with the event.

The Fountain Hills Little Theater performed a three-act production Friday and Saturday nights at the Beef ‘n Bourbon restaurant (later called The Village Pub and now known as Terra Nostra).  A Saturday night reception was held for the artists at the Community Center. One artist said he would be back the next year just for the party. Many artists commented it was the best run art show in which they have participated.

The newly-organized Kiwanis Club of Fountain Hills started another tradition at the first festival. They held their first pancake breakfast on Sunday morning.  Now known as the Noon Kiwanis Club, they were the lone concessionaire at the fair. They later expanded their menu and have participated in all of the subsequent festivals to this day.

The entertainment during the festival included the Fountain Hills Desert Singers and Seattle troubadour Steve Wilbur who strolled through the crowd playing classical guitar music.

Great memories! See you this weekend at the festival.