Thousands of people visited Rochester’s Corn Hill neighborhood this past weekend for the return of a longtime tradition. The event was sidelined the last 2 years, as were a number of other festivals due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Corn Hill Arts Festival is one of the city’s oldest festivals, having started more than 50 years ago.
It has always featured an eclectic group of artisans, and this year that included Georgie LeHoop, a Pennsylvania man who combines his many years of drumming with a technique he now uses to create painting.
LeHoop dips his drumsticks in paint and pounds them on a canvas to make both music and art. He has been at the Corn Hill event in past years and was just glad to be back.
“It’s just a beautiful area, look at this, I’m in the shade here, gorgeous trees, beautiful homes, beautiful area,” said LeHoop as a video of his drumming and painting technique played in his booth.
Cara Acker of Penfield was one of the thousands attending the festival and she also came to appreciate both the art and that section of the city.
“We don’t come to this neighborhood very often, so we like to look at the houses and there’s just a lot of variety in the booths and we like the kids area as well,” Acker said.
For a lot of festival-goers, like Mike Garbin of Webster, having the Corn Hill Arts Festival back in action made things seem closer to the way it used to be, before the pandemic.
“It’s nice to see artistry and honestly to see people here and all the artists out, that we’ve returned to a sense of normalcy,” said Garbin.
Proceeds from the annual Corn Hill Arts Festival are used to fund a number of programs that benefit that neighborhood.
