Park Point Art Fair turns 50

from The Woman Today May/June 2020

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In1971, Pat Joyelle wanted to stay home for a change. The prolific Duluth artist had been selling her pottery, tiles and fabric works at art fairs around the country. But the nomad’s life was wearing on her. She thought, “Why not here?” and with that created the first Park Point Art Fair on the grounds of the Lafayette Community Center at 3026 Minnesota Ave.

Joyelle remembers, “In the beginning, there were 12 artists sitting along the curb at Lafayette Park in May, during smelting season. … In the 1970s, smelting was a big attraction and Park Point was overrun with smelters and partygoers during the run. I thought it was a built-in market, but we discovered that smelters didn’t care about art — just smelt and beer.”

In those early years the “art fair” as a phenomenon hadn’t fully evolved into the orderly arrangements of tents and elaborate displays that are common now. Artists spread a blanket on the ground or set their works out on tables in the sun. People came, not sure what to expect, but liking the local wares.

The second year, the event was held at the “Tot Lot,” at 12th Street at the S-curve along Minnesota Avenue. Again, the setting was informal, but the interest was there.

Eventually the Park Point Art Fair migrated down the Point to the expansive Recreation Area at the end of Minnesota Avenue, and began to grow as an event organized and operated by the Park Point Community Club.

Through the 1970s, people living along the Point took note of the Art Fair traffic and began to schedule their garage sales for that weekend. By 1980, this was actually becoming disruptive to the Fair: Artists complained that by the time patrons made their way to the end of Lake, their pockets had been emptied by the discarded treasures found at the rummage sales. What could be done?

Community Club President Dick Braun stepped in as peacemaker in 1982: He proposed holding a communitywide rummage sale along the entire length of the Point, to be held a week before the Art Fair: the “Longest Rummage Sale in the World.” And that is how it has evolved.

Now the Park Point Rummage Sale and the Park Point Art Fair are the tentpoles of the Duluth summer, both occurring in June, and both going strong. The current Park Point Art Fair, the 50th edition set for June 27-28, 2020, has been cancelled due to COVOID-19 restrictions.

As is so typical of the Point and its tribe of Park Pointers, this sort of cooperation is a keynote: the Duluth Rowing Club helped with setup and takedown, and the PPAF donated some of the arts profit to them. The Fair continues to donate to youth arts and to environmental causes as well. Volunteers are a huge part of the Fair’s success.

These photos circa 1976 indicate there were no tents or canopies used at the Park Point Art Fair at that time. Vendors simply displayed their products under the trees.

And one of the most beloved of PPAF volunteers, Muggs McGillis, had an unofficial standing but was essential to the Fair. Her shoeboxes of notes were passed along to Ellen Dunlap, one of the official coordinators of the Fair, and proved invaluable. Muggs had grown up on the Point, her family inhabiting a last remaining building from the amusement park that had been part of the Point’s heyday in the 1920s, the White City. Her vivid and salty memories were part of Park Point’s atmosphere and helped keep the Art Fair real and grounded.

By 1990, the food concessions had become official, coordinators had been hired, and artists were juried into the show. Duluth had decided it liked its own art fair, and profits for artists and organizers, and donations to Park Point community causes, had become

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