2026 Arts Fest

Kelsey Flot
5 minutes ago
3 min read

We had our 4th annual Arts Fest at the Humboldt Farmer's Market Saturday July 11th. Would it even be an Arts Fest if we didn't all melt? It was a hot day with little breeze. Safe to say our cool mornings are over for a while. It may have been hot but we had a great day downtown. Our day was sponsored by Lofty Lou, Bank Iowa, and Humboldt Area Arts Council. Our vendors and artists were set up 8am-noon. There were multiple free kids' crafting stations and Kids Makers Market that started at 9am, and live music.

plaza view of kids makers market, crafts, and vendors

The big tent we'd been planning on fell through, but we found a group of people willing to help us out and bring individual canopies for the kid's crafts to sit under in the grass of the plaza. We had 5 local businesses and organizations provide crafts for kids. Nokomis Woodworking brought their tried and true scrap wood and glue for kids to build with. Humboldt Area Arts Council had rock painting along with face painting and tattoos. Next to their craft was a display of work from their Kids Art Camp that happened in June. Kiwanis had an origami craft and cookie decorating. The Heart of Play had watercolor painting. Honeycomb Speech and Language had a color your own bee crown. Bank Iowa had kids painting ceramic trinket boxes.

Each year the Humboldt Parks and Recreation organizes the Kids Makers Market. This year they had 11 makers set up. It was free to register and open to any kid 17 and younger with whatever they create. There was a wide range of products this year. Anything from baked goods, dog treats, slushies and lemonade to body products, jewelry, 3d products and decor!

Our live music in front of Night Owl Books was Emma Tew (Elsbecker). This was the first time we've ever gotten her, but she has been pretty well known in the area. We were very happy to have Emma as a background to our market.

We had a lot of familiar vendors set up along with some great artists! It was fun to be able to bring in some new people. We appreciate every artist for giving our market a chance. Our goal with Arts Fest each year is to open our community (of all ages) up to new things and activities. We had all of our vendors set up on the north side of the street with a couple in the plaza.

Our Vendors

Thank you for everyone who made this even happen and came out to support it. It's a team effort to bring together every year, and we love that our community wants to keep this long tradition alive. It's our 4th annual, but Arts Fest has been around since I was a kid. When we became organizers of the Humboldt Farmer's Market we learned it was in danger of being no more. We couldn't sit by and let that happen, so we picked it up. Arts Fest has been a lot of different things throughout the years, and we have big dreams for what it can be again!

We're officially halfway through the 2026 season. Our next market will be our yearly "field trip" to the Humboldt County Fair. We'll be set up in our usual spot in the grass by the tractor implements north of the Polka Hall Building. If you have no clue where that's at we'll have plenty of signage pointing you in the right direction!

Saturday, July 25th

8am-12pm

at the Humboldt County Fairgrounds