Original Article featured in Saint Louis Magazine - September 6, 2022

This weekend, the Saint Louis Art Fair will once again fill the streets of downtown Clayton with artist booths, family activities, and musical performances. There’s lots to look forward to at the three-day event, which will mark its 29th year with the theme “Love is in the Art,” inspired by both the community’s response to the arts and a number of couples represented among the presenting artists. We sat down with two of the festival's organizers, executive director Sarah Umlauf and director of operations and programming Tracey Morgan, to get their tips and recommendations for how to best enjoy Art Fair weekend.

What events are you most looking forward to people experiencing?

SU: We are bringing in some interactive arts experiences that we haven't done before. We always love to have what we call live art demonstrations at the Saint Louis Art Fair. So this year, we're bringing in, for one of the features, an amazing florist named Tony Montano, and he is with BUDS. Every day of the Art Fair, he is creating a massive floral installation live on the streets of Clayton. There's three locations, which everyone can find in the program guide, but that's really exciting, to see a live, larger-than-life floral installation being installed before your eyes...We're also having some chalk artists on Friday and Saturday, and that's always so fun, because once they're done, they encourage people to come up to walk and view the work. One of the chalk art installations will actually be three-dimensional, so I think people will have fun with that. We're also going to have live chef demonstrations presented by the Clarendale. They are bringing in their chefs, and they'll have samples available for the public. And let me tell you, if you're a foodie, you're going to want to be there to get those little bites. We've seen the menu, and it is five star. It’s fantastic. You're going to have to come see it and check it out to know what it is, but it's phenomenal.