Acclaimed Art Fair Returns To Mountain | Local News Stories

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Cloudy. Hazy. Low 57F. Winds light and variable..

Cloudy. Hazy. Low 57F. Winds light and variable.

Art lovers flocked back to the Kings Mountain Art Fair over the weekend as the beloved mountain event returned after a three-year hiatus.

Eighty-eight-year-old Alma Fletcher knows the Kings Mountain Art Fair like the back of her hand, having volunteered in just about every corner of the beloved community fair for the better part of the last century.

Over the weekend, Fletcher was one of many volunteers, artists, locals and visitors who were delighted to once again gather for the Kings Mountain Art Fair, in person, for the first time in three years.

“I truly have not seen some of these people for three years,” said Fletcher. “So to be able to see my neighbors is just fantastic.”

Nestled in the redwoods along Highway 35, thousands flocked to browse the juried art booths, eat the famed giant cookies, and enjoy the unique event. Fletcher said cars were lined up for more than a mile on either side of the road on Monday as people trekked up the mountain.

The event is circled on many calendars around the Bay Area many months in advance, but, in 1963, the very first one started out as just a small fundraiser for the local volunteer fire brigade.

“Oh, it was really beautiful, but it was very, very small,” said Fletcher.

The Pine Needles, a group of local women, sold its wares, and artists put their paintings up for sale. At the time the community was building the volunteer fire department building, and, before the framing was done, the artists hung their paintings on the posts for the fair. Fletcher's husband, who helped build the building, and another local slept there the night before the fair to protect the paintings.

“Everybody volunteers,” said Fletcher. “If you live up here, you volunteer.”

At that first fair, they raised $50 for the fire brigade.

“At the time we thought that was just amazing,” said Fletcher.

While the event has grown and changed over the years, the ideals behind it haven't. Sixty-plus years later the annual fundraiser for the fire brigade and local school remains an emblem of the mountain's values.

“It’s a really unique community where everybody helps everybody else,” said Fletcher, who after a fire in her house, a fall while walking on Skyline Boulevard, and a tree landing on her house, has relied on the services of the local volunteer fire brigade.

After the COVID-19 pandemic put a pause on in-person programming in the area, the artists were also excited to be back. Dorothee Naumburg, a goldsmith, has been showing her work at the fair for 20 years.

“It’s my sentimental favorite,” she said. “It has a hometown feel. It’s such a small, little, big community. Everybody is so nice, and they appreciate art ... It’s almost like people leave their meanness and nastiness at the bottom of the hill. I have not met an unfriendly person up here.”

Originally from Germany, Naumburg has always been very hands-on. She said that having a mom who was a painter and a dad who was an engineer, she got a bit of both the artistic and technical worlds, and ultimately settled on jewelry-making.

“It just sat right with me,” she said. “Even though I didn’t quite know what it meant to be a goldsmith, as soon as I started my apprenticeship, it just felt right. It was just so awesome to be able to create something with my own hands that was shiny and beautiful, and that somebody might want to buy from you.”

Instead of using a mass production technique by which you carve a piece out of a block of wax, cast and mold it to make thousands of one kind of piece, which many goldsmiths do, she makes each piece from scratch.

“There’s not one exactly like it. Each one comes out a little differently because they’re all made from scratch.”

The first time she showed at the Kings Mountain Art Fair, she was driving up the mountain with her husband and thought she might be lost.

“Then the clouds cleared and we were up above the clouds, in the redwoods, and it’s one of the most unlikely places for a show, but it’s just one of the most beautiful locations for a show,” she said.

Despite the heat, she said people flocked to the show.

“People showed up as if they haven’t been to a show in three years,” she joked. ▪

Emma Spaeth is a staff writer for the Half Moon Bay Review covering community, arts and sports. Emma grew up in Half Moon Bay before earning a bachelor’s degree in public relations from the University of Oregon.