Festival Of The Arts To Transform Fowler Park This Weekend; More Than 120 Vendors Expected

WAUKESHA — Fowler Park will host the 34th annual Festival of the Arts on Saturday and Sunday, drawing more than 120 vendors selling paintings, sculpture, jewelry, pottery, and woodwork across two stages of continuous live entertainment, according to the Fine Arts Society of Waukesha County.

The precise figure, organizers confirmed Wednesday, is 122, two more than the "more than 120" advertised on festival signage and social media since June. Coordinator Cheryl Bosch, 54, attributed the overage to a pair of late walk-up registrants who paid the $85 booth fee in cash at Tuesday evening's vendor check-in and were assigned space by measuring what remained of the grass with a fiberglass tape.

"We don't like to advertise a number we can't hold to," Bosch said. "So we round down and hope nobody counts."

The Reshuffle

The late arrivals set off a booth reshuffle Tuesday night that Bosch described as "the fun part, technically." The more consequential move involved Booth 47, previously assigned to a hand-poured concrete birdbath vendor whose merchandise, weighed on a bathroom scale borrowed from a nearby resident, averaged 38 pounds per piece. The booth was relocated from a shaded patch of lawn near the gazebo, judged by the site committee to be "structurally optimistic" for repeated forklift-free unloading, to a paved section of the walking loop near the tennis courts.

The vendor, Waukesha resident Doug Fassbender, 61, said he has sold birdbaths at the festival for six consecutive years and has never once been assigned pavement before this one. "Grass looks nicer in photos," Fassbender said. "But grass has never once helped me get a dolly out of a rut."

"Grass looks nicer in photos. But grass has never once helped me get a dolly out of a rut."

— Doug Fassbender, concrete birdbath vendor

Two Stages, One Overlap

The festival's live music lineup runs continuously on two stages roughly 40 yards apart, a layout organizers say allows attendees to "always be near music." The schedule also means a bluegrass duo booked on the north stage and a four-piece Beatles tribute act booked on the south stage are both slated to play from 1 to 2 p.m. Saturday, a conflict Bosch called "not ideal, but not new." A similar overlap in 2024 between a barbershop quartet and a drum circle was resolved, she said, "by the drum circle winning, the way drum circles do."

Food vendors number 14 this year, up from 11 in 2025, including a kettle corn cart new to the festival. Based on attendance figures from last year's event, which drew an estimated 9,400 visitors over two days, organizers project the kettle corn line will exceed the wait for the park's single public restroom by mid-afternoon Saturday.

Parking And Remarks

Fowler Park's main lot holds 118 vehicles. Overflow parking will be directed to the lot at St. William Catholic Church, three blocks north, an arrangement the festival has used since 2019 without, Bosch said, "a single incident we're aware of, that we're aware of."

Councilman Gary Puchalski is scheduled to offer brief opening remarks at 10 a.m. Saturday before the ribbon-cutting, which this year will be performed with a pair of ceramic scissors on loan from a festival potter rather than the usual borrowed hedge trimmers. "The arts deserve better tools than yard work," Puchalski said in a statement. "This is a small step in that direction."

Admission remains free. The festival runs 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days, weather permitting, and weather, per the National Weather Service's five-day outlook as of Wednesday, is expected to permit.