An Eventful Summer Weekend Dedicated to the Arts

Cherry Creek Arts Festival 2024. | Photo: Liz Levy

The day after the Cherry Creek Arts Festival, photographer Greg Davis visited the home of Andree Braun, who’d purchased one of his framed pieces at the event. Greg noticed right away a large, mixed media sculpture by Dolan Geiman, also purchased at this year’s festival. As he looked around Andree’s home, he saw two other pieces by Geiman, and then began noticing work from several other festival artists. He’d found himself in the home of a true collector.

Greg’s experience happens more than you might think. This year, 250 artists exhibited their work at the annual Cherry Creek Arts Festival in Cherry Creek North, over three beautiful Colorado days—July 5 to 7—whose clear skies and lovely weather brought out even more happy people than usual. The three-day festival broke at least one record: based on early figures, the average exhibiting artist sold more than $20,000 worth of art.

Cherry Creek Arts Festival 2024. | Photo: Mickkail Cain

Festival shoppers included seasoned collectors from Colorado and beyond, first-time buyers of original art, and even Melissa Etheridge, as well as a motley crew of around sixty teenagers: the 2024 participants in the annual Student Art Buying Program.

Run by year-round nonprofit CherryArts, who produces the 33-year-old arts festival as well as a number of other year-round art-focused experiences, Student Art Buying brings students from twenty-two different Colorado schools to the festival, where they’re given $500 to spend on original art.

Cherry Creek Arts Festival 2024. | Photo: Carol Havrda

The kids take their work seriously, exploring the whole festival, meeting and speaking with artists, and deciding together which pieces will fit best on permanent display in their buildings. For some schools, the art purchased at the festival is their very first work of original art. This program is one of several ways the annual festival helps achieve CherryArts’ year-round mission to provide access to art experiences and support arts education in Colorado while supporting working artists.

Another is the Emerging Artists Program, whose five participants at this year’s festival showcased their work in this way for the first time thanks, in part, due to $5,000 grants provided to each of them by CherryArts. “This year’s festival was one of our best,” said Tara Brickell, executive director of CherryArts. “That’s a bold statement for a 33-year-old, popular event, but so many factors this year came together just right.”

Cherry Creek Arts Festival 2024. | Photo: David Dunda

Besides art and artists, those factors included a full slate of live music and pop-up cultural performances; a DJ-led dance party on Saturday night; plenty of eats and drinks; the always bustling Creation Station, where young visitors to the festival worked with more than a dozen community partners to create their own original art; and, harder to pin down but palpable all weekend nonetheless: that combined feeling of awe and inspiration that’s sparked by finding oneself surrounded by such talented artists and their work.

The next Cherry Creek Arts Festival will take place from July 4 to 6, 2025. Learn more about Student Art Buying, the Emerging Artists Program, and explore the full roster of 2024 artists.

Cherry Creek Arts Festival 2024. | Photo: Liz Levy