Montgomery to Red Autumn artists: ‘This is your art festival’

With the inaugural year under his belt, Red Autumn founder and organizer Lance Montgomery is optimistic for an even bigger, more successful second year in 2024.

“Last year was a success in terms of a first-year art festival that was just getting started,” Montgomery recalls. “The event was a huge success amongst artists. We wanted to create a very artist-friendly environment, an event that’s focused on the arts.”

While the focus is on artists, Montgomery says festival sponsors and nonprofit partners — such as Sequoyah Animal Advocates or Stanley Tubbs Memorial Library — will have booths as well, “but otherwise, it’s all artists.” The organizer says nonprofit partners will also have art-focused opportunities at their booths, “whether that’s a giveaway for a pet portrait, or something where kids can have an interactive art experience by being able to sit down and create something,” Montgomery says.

Montgomery is not resting on his one-year laurels, however, and is already tweaking this year’s festival eight months ahead of its Oct. 5 date.

“We wanna try to make the event a little different each year, so that it’s not the same thing every year. Right now, I’m focused on bringing on as many artists — as diverse an array of artists — as possible from as wide a geographic area as we can.

“Last year, we had artists from four states: Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri and New York. I’m hoping that we can expand that footprint out a little this year. I wanna create something that we host in Sallisaw, but if you’re an artist or an art enthusiast who lives in Oklahoma City, or northwest Arkansas, or northern Texas, you feel like this is your art festival here, and to bring those people to our community to spend a great day engaging in the arts,” Montgomery says.

“I wanna give people, local artists, an outlet to show off their work, something that they can be excited about every year. We do have local artists who are very, very creative and just as talented as you’ll find anywhere else, and we wanna provide them something in their own backyard where they can come and show off their work.

“We had a number of artists who said — this isn’t to knock any other events — they had more in sales at Red Autumn last year than they did at some of the larger, more well-established events that they’ve gone and set up at, so that was very good to hear,” Montgomery adds.

As of last week, 24 artists had registered for the 2024 festival, which is far ahead of the first year when only five artists had signed up during the first two weeks registration was open. About 50 artists ended up participating in the Nov. 4, 2023, festival.

“We’re moving along at a pretty nice clip in terms of artist engagement. I think one of the things that’s kinda fun about this event is it’s a regional effort,” he says, noting “local” artists came from as far away as Woodward last year.

Who can participate?

The festival is open to all artists — “art is pretty broad in interpretation, and we try to accommodate that” — which Montgomery says is the event’s foundation.

“Last year, we had artists that ranged from people who do it part-time, to people who do it for a living and have work hanging in museums and galleries throughout the Southwest or with kind of the fourstate — Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri — area, to the artist from New York City. Seeing those artists who Red Autumn was their very first show or their very first event ever mingling with those more experienced, well-seasoned artists was a lot of fun to see,” he says. “There was an artist last year, Brendan Hopkins out of Tulsa, who does a lot of portrait art of celebrities. He made his very first sale ever at a show here in Sallisaw. He’s gone on to really make a name for himself and kind of expand his audience base. So, hopefully, we’ll be able to get him back this year as well.

“Any artist is welcome to be part of the event. They don’t have to have any sort of pedigree or they don’t have to have a resume. If you call yourself an artist and you wanna present your work to the public, here’s your place. The public, the viewer will make the judgment as to the value of that art. But we won’t. The festival will be open to anyone who wants to participate, whether that’s photography, sculpture, acrylic, watercolor, oils, etc. We even had textile artists here [last year]. We had Lucas Wildcat here, he’s an artist that does the traditional Cherokee, the blow darts and things like that. We have a very eclectic mix, which is exactly the way we want it,” Montgomery says.

“But we look forward to when our event is able to appeal to some of the more national- or regional-level artists. In terms of the more renowned artists, I think you have to be part of a show that kind of makes a name for itself over time to be able to pull in those. Last year, the artist that we had that probably had the broadest audience is an artist who calls himself Ghost. He’s from New York City, he’s a pop artist. He’s very much engaged. When he came to Red Autumn, he had just finished with New York Fashion Week, showing some art and some things there. So that was really cool to have someone like that here. He just kinda fell in our laps last year. He just happened to be coming through at that particular date and had some work with him, so he set up,” Montgomery recalls. “If we can make that magic happen again this year, he’ll be back if he wants to be.”

The festival doesn’t only attract artists, but also art galleries in search of artists.

“We had, I believe, two galleries on the prowl here last year that were able to take some of our artists and have their work hanging in their galleries now. So under the umbrella of exposure, there’s exposure to people that they meet who may be interested in their work, purchase a piece or maybe come back later to commission a piece or something like that,” he says, embracing the collaboration among artists and interest from galleries.

“That’s one thing that I want to try to build on this year is offering galleries some incentives for showing up. Whether they want to set up a booth or not, that’s fine, but just being able to let them know they can come here and find some great art to show in their galleries that may otherwise go unnoticed or fly under the radar.

“I think for a lot of the artists, our area offers a lot of potential in that you have, say for example, artists from Oklahoma City, it’s an opportunity for them to get their art into a whole new audience just because of our proximity to Northwest Arkansas, and we’re part of the Fort Smith metro area. So it’s getting their work in front of a whole new set of eyeballs,” Montgomery says.

Registration is available at the festival website: RedAutumn. art

Dan Keys created art onsite at the 2023 Red Autumn festival.

Looking ahead

“We want to continue to grow it every year, get different types of art, have kind of juried events and things of that nature as we grow and develop,” Montgomery says.

With the inaugural festival behind him — when he “was running around like a madman that day” and learned the value of a more robust volunteer group — Montgomery expects to again incorporate a film aspect like was featured a year ago.

“There’s the group that puts on the Fort Smith International Film Festival every year, Brandon Goldsmith. He’ll be part of the event, so we’ll have some film screenings of some independent, locally made films again like we did last year. That’ll be something that I want to keep,” he says. Montgomery’s original idea was to host a film festival to capitalize on the growth of the film industry in Oklahoma and in Arkansas.

“There’s an artist from Woodward that attended our event last year and was very excited about it, which was good to hear that someone thought that a four-and-a-half-hour drive was worth their while to come set up. They very much believe in the future of the event and want to be a part of it from not only setting up a booth at the event, but helping make it happen, helping with artist outreach, things of that nature,” Montgomery says. “In terms of reaching out to artists to help bring them to the event, we haven’t even started that with much gusto yet. It’s just people have heard the event’s happening again, and so they’ve gone to the website and signed up to be artists, to be part of the event. And we’ve already gotten 24 just by that.”

While the festival provides an attractive venue for those just starting out in the arts, Montgomery believes there’ll come a time when well-known artists will come to Sallisaw.

“I think that we need to have probably a couple of successful events under our belts to be able to bring in some of the more renowned regional or national artists, but that’s the goal. And I’m certainly not too bashful to ask them to come.

“I think this year one of the things that I want to focus on is bringing more artists from Northwest Arkansas. I mean, we’re an hour and change from Fayetteville. So Northwest Arkansas is in our backyard, and they have a thriving arts community there. So I want to get on their radar a little bit, bring some of those artists in,” he says. “Last year, and so far this year, we have great response from Oklahoma City. We had three artists from Bristow last year. We had [artists] from the Tulsa metro, the Oklahoma City metro. We had artists from throughout Oklahoma. But the target this year is to bring in more artists from Northwest Arkansas.”

Can it get too big?

When the Oklahoma City Arts Festival first began in the late 1960s, it was probably unthinkable that it would grow to become one of the largest, most successful and best organized festivals in the nation. But every journey begins with a first step.

Montgomery

“I think we have a lot of room to grow before we run into a problem of getting too big. The city has been extremely accommodating in helping make this event happen. I think that we could probably block off as many streets as we need to block off if it comes to that, in order to keep this event thriving and keep it here. I want to keep it downtown. I really like the downtown atmosphere. The artists really like the downtown atmosphere. “We got a lot of compliments, the physical layout of the city got a lot of compliments from artists who noted how we have all the parking on the other side of Cherokee [Avenue]; we have a stage downtown, two if you count the pocket park; we have the Wheeler Event Center, which is where we had the film screenings last year; we have a number of privately owned spaces like The Venue next to J&D’s, Munchie Mike’s and the Journey Hall behind there, they were both part of the festival last year as well. They provided indoor spaces for some of our artists. So downtown is just a good fit, and I think the city would be willing to help us meet any sort of obstacles that we would face if we ever kind of bumped up against being too big,” Montgomery says.

History

“The Red Autumn festival is its own 501(c)(3), non-profit entity. It’s just something that I whipped up last year. It was something that I thought a lot about in terms of ‘what are things that are accessible, that we could do here in Sallisaw; some sort of event that we can do here’,” Montgomery explains. “The arts are something that’s almost universal. Most people like some sort of art, whether that’s visual arts or music, or whatever. So [I wanted it to be] something that has broad appeal, that we can start here and build up.

“I wanted to have the event in the fall, and I wanted the name to be something that … when you think of Red Autumn, you kinda think of the red sunsets, the red leaves. Red or orange were the two colors that come to mind, and Orange Autumn just didn’t have the same ring to it. I thought that Red Autumn kinda rolls off the tongue, and it wasn’t taken by any other event, so it was unique in that regard. It also isn’t specific to any particular place. I wanna create an event where — no matter where people are from in the region, whether they’re from Oklahoma City or northwest Arkansas, Little Rock, Tulsa, here in Sallisaw, wherever — they feel like this is their event. We just host it here in Sallisaw. And Red Autumn kinda ties it down to a particular time of year, but that’s it. It doesn’t associate it with any particular place or anything like that,” Montgomery says.