Detours Magazine Event of the Week: Tom Thumb Art Festival

Event: Tom Thumb Art Festival When: April 15-16, 2016 Location: The Aquadome, 120 S Main St., Kirksville, MO 63501 Who: Art enthusiasts Cost: Free Take part is a longstanding tradition by attending the Tom Thumb Annual Floating Art Festival Friday and Saturday at The Aquadome. For almost 20 years, students have honored the arts through the art exhibition created by Jimmy Kuehnle and Kjell Hahn in 1998. They were originally unhappy with restrictions placed on students with the kind of artwork accepted into art shows and instead created an exhibit that would be non-juried and where all art would be accepted. Since then, students and Kirksville community members interested in the event have helped to organize the festival each year. In the past, the festival has been a one-day event. However, with this year’s theme being XXL — extra extra large — the exhibition will be hosted during a two-day span to allow students and visitors a greater opportunity to attend. Something remarkable about Tom Thumb is that it is a traveling art exhibit, meaning the location of the festival changes every year. While venues may be repeated throughout the years, the festival is never hosted in the same place for two consecutive years. When it was first created, the festival was hosted in different people’s apartments. As the festival gained momentum, it was hosted in venue spaces. Since 2013, it has been hosted at the previous Aquadome — which was destroyed by a storm in 2014 — Manhattan Events, and local hookah bars in downtown Kirksville. Art for the exhibit varies from performing arts, such as musicians and bands to literature and poetry readings, and artwork painted by students. To comply with the non-juried tradition and to encourage creativity, the committee in charge is usually accepting of many different styles of art. However, Truman student Alex Wennerberg says in the instance that the art is highly discriminatory or overly sexist, the Tom Thumb committee serves the right to deny artwork. “Tom Thumb is really about empowering the artist and not having us be the jurors of taste and determining what is good art and what’s not,” Wennerberg says. For the full story, continue reading on the Detours Magazine website.