Antique Festival set for downtown area this year on May 5-6
Market Street will be blocked to traffic most of the day Friday and Saturday May 5-6 as the 18th Annual Clinch River Spring Antique Festival promises to bring thousands of people to Historic Downtown Clinton.
Shoppers will be able to take advantage of special offers in the many downtown retail shops, which are geared up for the annual event.
The festival, which includes street vendors and food trucks, will run from noon to 8 p.m. on Friday, and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, with most of the action taking place along Market Street, but also in the stores in the downtown area.
Presented by The Antique Merchants Guild of Clinton, the city of Clinton, and the Historic Downtown Clinton group, there is no admission charge for the event.
Visitors, who are expected to come from all over the region, should be able to find plenty of free parking in the city lot on Commerce Street.
Live entertainment will be presented on Friday and Saturday.
On Friday, performances begin at noon with the Clinton High School Choir.
Then from 2-4 p.m., the Jasper Hollow Duo will perform, followed from 4-6 p.m. by the Well Drinkers Duo, and from 6-8 p.m. by the Fountain City Ramblers.
Saturday’s entertainment kicks off with 323 North Main from 11 a.m. until noon, followed by Wild Blue Yonder from noon-2 p.m., and from 2-4 p.m., the cast of the Netflix show Swap Shop will be on stage. They include appraisers Bobby, Jason, Jen, Doug, Lary, Tori and Gavin.
This is one of two antique festivals scheduled each year in downtown Clinton. The other one comes in fall.
The Spring Antique Festival kicks off the summer selling season for the downtown stores, and has long been a popular event.
“Nobody does antiques quite like Clinton; just ask Martha Stewart!” says a post on the Historic Downtown Clinton website.
The event will be held rain or shine, the organizers say.
This year’s Spring Antique Festival will come just two weeks after Historic Downtown Clinton’s Third-Annual Mosaic Arts Festival, which will be held on Saturday, April 22, with most events taking place in the new “green space” area in the Commerce Street parking lot.
The arts festival will run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., but there will be a “color run” beginning at 9 a.m. to kick off the day’s events.
This year’s arts festival will include art vendors, caricatures, a paint bus, face painting, chalk art, STEM activities, crafts, a petting zoo, and a series of live performances.
The Clinton High School Jazz Band will be the first to perform, followed by the Clinton City Schools’ Ukulele Club, sixth-grade band, and color guard.
Knoxville’s Children’s Theater will also be on hand to perform songs from “Beauty and the
Beast” and” Magic Tree House,” and the Dream Dance Studio will showcase its young dancers.
There also will be a children’s story time with Poppy Wise, author and designer of “I Want to be a French Fry,” described as “a short, quirky kids’ book aiming to teach diversity and kindness through the analogy of the French fry.”
Clinton Middle School and CHS music, dance and cheer will also be joining the festival, and the day will end with a dance party on the dance floor.
The Summer Small Studio will be re-creating a photo from Clinton from the 1900s in chalk art.
Art with Addie will be painting the scene and auctioning her Clinton paintings at the end of the event.
Historic Downtown Clinton will also have its “Color Clinton” coloring books for sale, featuring 15 hand-drawn images of historic buildings in Clinton with information on each one. The books are $10, and include crayons.
Vendors will be selling handmade ceramics and jewelry, acrylics, oil paintings, hand-painted bottles with fairy lights, bookmarks, wood carvings, hand lettering, edge art engravings, botanical illustrations, mixed media, and more.
The CHS FFA and the city of Clinton Tree Board will also be on hand with Earth Day activities.
Clinton City Schools will also be featuring student art in the Hoskins Park that will include 1,000 ceramic flowers created by the students.
Kona Ice, Rhyno’s Roadside, TK’s Gourmet, Shirley Boy’s, and Good Hombres will have food items, and Bailey’s Beverages will have a special mosaic punch created for this event.
For more information on either event, visit facebook.com/HistoricDowntownClintonTN.
