Axes, banners highlight festival

By FINN HARTNETT

Staff writer

Peabody’s Fall Festival brought a large crowd to City Park to experience art, music, and local community on an unseasonably warm Saturday.

A wide array of vendors and activities and a sizable, if scattered crowd turned out.

“It’s a testament to the community,” Susan Mayo of Sunflower Theater said. “I mean, we’ve got so many great activities, lots of vendors, all kinds of kids things, arts and crafts stuff. This fair’s really grown.”

Fall Festival began in 2017 on Walnut St. before it moved to City Park a few years later. Sunflower Theater has been a part of the fair since the theater was founded in 2020.

In past years, the theater organized culture shows such as live music and dance. This year, thanks to a $8,500 grant from the Kansas Arts Commission, it sponsored a project by visual artist Carol Bradbury.

Bradbury worked with elementary, middle, and high school students Friday to create large murals of plant and animal life using silk paint.

“We’re growing a community garden,” she said of the project.

At the festival, Bradbury set up a new canvas for fair-goers to paint and draw their own naturalistic designs upon.

“It was really fun to work with the kids,” Mayo said.
And now we’re getting community input in here.”

Bradbury plans to take photos of the canvases and turn sections of the murals into banners to be hung on Walnut St.

The project “captures both the ‘I am’ and the ‘we are,’ and reflects the community as a whole,” she said. “I love this place. This is my first time in Peabody, and I’m just so impressed. I’m impressed with the people coming out. Beautiful park, beautiful town.”

Mayo said she expects the banners to bring the Peabody community together.

“Every community has different factions, but when you have an art project that everyone can participate in, I think it goes beyond the boundaries of divisiveness,” she said. “And it’ll make our downtown look pretty.”

Asked whether the banners would replace the sea of American flags flying along Walnut St., Mayo said Sunflower Theater was trying to set things up so both the banners and the flags could fly at the same time.

“We’re trying to do things so they can both be on the pole,” Mayo said.

In addition to Bradbury’s art, a petting zoo and climbing wall proved popular. So too did the Tomahawk Truck, an ax-throwing booth affixed to the back of a pickup truck. John Arndt ran the booth, although he stressed he did not own the Tomahawk Truck.

“I’m just the pretty face,” he said with a chuckle.

Arndt is from Towanda, a city of around a thousand near El Dorado.

“It’s been amazing,” he said. “Everyone’s so friendly. I’m seeing all kinds of walks of life.

“I was kind of expecting my small town, just everyone kind of the same. But I’m getting a lot of different vibes from a lot of different people.”