It’s ‘summer’ all year long for Summer of the Arts head Lisa Barnes

IOWA CITY - Lisa Barnes loves holding onto a giant umbrella - just not on event days.

Barnes is the executive director for Summer of the Arts, the overarching organization founded in the fall of 2005 to offer shared resources for fundraising and marketing, as well as a central administration office for the various events that keep downtown Iowa City hopping from May through September.

But don't let the word 'summer” fool you. Barnes and her staff work year-round to make sure everything runs smoothly for the Friday Night Concert Series on the Ped Mall from May 15 to Sept. 18; the free movie series on the Pentacrest lawn June 13 to Aug. 22; the Iowa Arts Festival, spread over the downtown core streets June 5 to 7; the indoor MusicIC festival blending chamber music with literature in several sites June 17 to 20; and the Iowa City Jazz Festival from July 2 to 4 and the Iowa Soul Festival from Aug. 28 to 30, both of which spill from the Pentacrest to nearby streets.

The Friday Night concerts and the outdoor movies can move inside. But the other outdoor events happen rain or shine, unless the weather's just too dangerous for participants, musicians and audiences.

'Since I've been involved with Summer of the Arts, we've had every possible scenario with weather, other than a tornado - knock on wood,” Barnes said.

With a background in meeting planning and association management in her native Des Moines and the Corridor, she served as interim executive director of Summer of the Arts for most of 2007, then stepped into the full-time role in November 2009. The umbrella organization now operates with three full-time and one part-time employees, several interns, 600 volunteers and a $700,000 budget.

Thanks to sponsorships, grants and donations, all events are free to the public.

Rain has canceled some side-stage events during Barnes's tenure, but seldom any of the covered main-stage events. Setup and sound checks take so long for those, that tearing them down and moving them indoors isn't practical, she said, especially as no other downtown venues can handle the thousands of people who fill every nook and cranny within sight and sound of the main stages.

Dr. Lonnie Smith's 2010 Jazz Festival concert was the rainout exception in recent years.

'We were fortunate in that the fireworks were still able to go, but we were all a bunch of wet rats that night,” she said.

She's amazed that even on the drizzly nights, fans still flock to the shows.

'Bless their hearts, this community will come out with their umbrellas and listen to a good band,” she said. 'We have lots of pictures of people standing in front of the stage with their umbrellas, which is wonderful, but we do watch (the weather) very closely. ...

'You just never know. Our goal is to always do as much as we can do to keep (events) open.”

Heat can be just as miserable, she said, recalling the year temperatures nudged 100 degrees during Jazz Fest, prompting organizers to bring in large misting fans.

'That's hard,” she said of those extreme heat days. 'It's really hard on staff, and people were just grumpy, even coming to it.”

On any hot event day, she said it looks as if nobody's listening to the Pentacrest stage because the audience is 'all under the trees.”

But when the elements cooperate, the events draw anywhere from 200 to 600 people for the movies and MusicIC to 35,000 people for the Jazz Festival.

Even when Barnes isn't overseeing the events, she's immersed in art. Paintings, drawings, pottery and items she has purchased from exhibiting artists adorn the walls and shelves of her office at 325 E. Washington St. Her mother and grandfather were artists, and even though she put away her dancing shoes after 13 years of lessons and stowed her supplies from dabbling in art classes while studying journalism, English and business at the University of Iowa, the married mother of two and former assistant cheerleading coach has landed her dream job cheerleading for the arts.

'There are moments in your life that really stand out as you're witnessing something special,” she said, pointing to the crowd reaction to such artists as Los Lobos, Al Jarreau and Indigo Girls.

'That's what we always talk about. We're helping people create these fabulous memories.”