Marion Arts Festival Director Deb Bailey retires after 19 years

MARION — Deb Bailey never thought of herself as someone with an immense interest in art.

But then she became director of the popular and highly respected Marion Arts Festival, overseeing 18 festivals in the past 19 years.

And now Bailey, 61, is retiring from that role.

Even before she began directing the arts festival, Bailey said her home was filled with art that she and her husband, Al Lewis, had collected over the years.

“We went to museums and art shows all the time,” Bailey said. “We always gravitated toward art, but it had not occurred to me as being a thread to pull.”

The Marion Arts Festival, which celebrated its 30th anniversary this year, is held in Uptown Marion in May.

The Marion Chamber of Commerce hires the festival director, a full-time job, who is responsible for recruiting and selecting 50 artists, organizing the festival, fundraising, marketing and more.

Bailey said her husband calls the festival — a juried art show judged by experts — “an outdoor wedding for 10,000, with 50 brides and eight caterers and a kids table for 400, and that might be all the description anyone needs to know.”

“There’s a festival advisory board and a group of volunteers, and they literally make the event,” Bailey said. “They are idea machines and the muscle behind the scenes. I love them.”

‘A happy job’

Bailey’s background was in social work, though she’d sold her handmade jewelry at arts festivals to make extra money while putting herself through graduate school.

“Then I started thinking about getting a happy job,” she said. “Once I started looking, the position was open and I applied and, 19 years later, here we are.

“I had experience with grant writing, event coordination, and I did indoor and outdoor events. I did have some transferable skills, but I feel like I lucked into it.”

‘She is a force’

While Bailey thinks that luck played a role, others who’ve worked with her cite her passion, hard work and understanding and respect of working artists as qualities that have grown the festival.

“She is a force,” Chamber President Jill Ackerman said of Bailey. “She’s always been so much fun to work with and has taken complete ownership of the festival and made it what it is today. She’s one of the funniest people I know. I have a whole file folder on my computer of saved Deb Bailey emails because they are hilarious.”

‘Selfless role’

Priscilla Steele, a well-known Marion artist, said Bailey’s retirement is a “genuine loss for the community and the festival. It was conceived as a driver for the growth of Marion. It has proved to be an effective economic tool. Deb always took this goal extremely seriously.”

Steele and her husband, Craig Campbell, came up with the idea for an arts festival in 1992 when they owned and operated the Campbell Steele Gallery in Marion. They worked with Victoria Quinn-Stephens, the festival’s first director, and the Marion Chamber of Commerce to launch the Marion Arts Festival in 1993.

Over the years, the festival has been named one of the Top 25 art festivals in the nation, a top show featuring 100 artists or fewer, and one of the best one-day events in the country.

Steele said that Bailey “recognized the needs of Uptown Marion and, at the same time, integrated that fully with a sensibility that relishes the visual arts and celebrates the people who create visual art in a sincere, personal way — not an egotistical, ambitious way for herself. It is a selfless role she took on.”

Keeping it fresh

Bailey said an important goal for the next director is to keep the festival fresh. Of this year’s 50-artist festival lineup, half of the artists were new to the event, she said.

The festival, she said, was helped along by an artist database the National Endowment to the Arts created in 2005. Using that resource, she said, made it easier for the festival to find and recruit working artists from around the country and the world.

“We ended up going from 150 applications to over 350 applications, and it was just a whole different landscape moving forward,” Bailey said.

Ackerman said the arts festival continues to be an economic driver for the city and that the chamber is now accepting applications for the next director.

“Ten thousand people come to our City Square Park that day in May every year, and it’s always an excellent sales day for retail and restaurants,” she said. “Festival goers, per party, are spending around $86 on average when they come to the festival. The festival really makes an overall economic impact.”

When asked if she plans to continue being involved with the arts festival in some other capacity, Bailey said no, that she will be turning her attention to fighting for voter’s rights.

“It’s the next director’s turn. I want them to create their event and the next event, not a past event,” she said. “But I will always be in the audience.”

Comments: (319) 398-8255; gage.miskimen@thegazette.com