Art walk shares gratitude for May event

To the editor:

Fairfield 1st Fridays Art Walk is grateful to everyone who participated in this year?s May 4th Dance Art in Motion Art Walk.

The Art in Motion Dance Showcase was a huge success and featured over 40 dancers exhibiting 17 different dance styles and genres on the Sondheim stage at the Fairfield Arts and Convention Center. It is amazing the incredible diversity of dance available in Fairfield.

A huge amount of gratitude goes to all the performers who donated their time and creativity to create this incredible fundraiser for Art Walk. A special thanks goes to the dance studios whose teachers and students devoted so much time to crafting this fine performance: Fairfield Art of Dance, Passion Dance Studio, Temple Studio of Fine Art, Fred Astaire of the Quad Cities, Bollywood Iowa and Dance New York Studio of Cedar Rapids. A big acknowledgement should go out to Terry Baker who was the ?woman behind the curtain? and helped to coordinate this amazing performance.

Besides the success of the Art in Motion Dance Showcase, we were very fortunate to have such fabulous weather on the square! The evening was delightful and there was a very good turnout. We are particularly grateful to the musicians who performed on and around the Fairfield town square that evening: Global Cooling, Art Walk Buskers and Blue Cat Alley. For those of you who are not familiar with the Art Walk Buskers, they are individual performers that will set up at various points around the square and perform solo. These individual musicians included Jeffrey Hedquist, Phoenix Jordan and Sharon Bousquet, Brooklyn Joe and Keith DeBoer who were willing to try this new and fun concept. It was very well received.

We also want to share our gratitude to all the volunteers that came to help and support Art Walk last Friday. We had more volunteers than ever and we are very grateful to all the youth support that we received! Further, special thanks go out to the Hawthorne team that showed up with enthusiasm and focus and also gave us some great ideas too! We are also grateful to all the adults and friends of Art Walk that showed up to help. We are always looking for volunteers to help with a variety of activities in the summer months. This is a great opportunity for individuals, service organizations and businesses to come and support our community by making these events bigger and better. So please don?t be shy, contact us and volunteer! You can reach us at fairfieldartalk@gmail.com or 641-233-8883.

Another big thanks goes out to all of the businesses that are sponsoring and supporting Art Walk. We are moving closer to our fundraising goal. We encourage local companies and individuals to keep supporting Art Walk because when you support Art Walk you are supporting the entire community.

Last but not least, Fairfield 1st Fridays Art Walk wants to thank the community as a whole for attending this Art Walk and all other Art Walk events. Without your community support, Art Walk would not be what it is.

? Dania De Bortoli, executive director and event coordinator of the Fairfield 1st Fridays Art Walk Board of Directors