Spruce Pine’s annual Alien Festival is a commercial success
Steffen Silvis
MNJ Contributor
In equal parts market and carnival, the fourth annual Alien Festival took control of Oak Street in downtown Spruce Pine Saturday, with hundreds of people enjoying what is billed as the largest UFO/alien festival in North Carolina.
There were several factors last weekend that threatened to hamper the festival’s success, including rival events nearby, such as Penland School of Craft’s PrideFest: Holler Back Stronger, as well as Burnsville’s participation in the nationwide No Kings protest, which took up the center of town.
The weather was also expected to ruin things with rain, but the promised showers didn’t arrive until after the festival’s close.
More than 200 market booths lined both sides of Oak Street from the Appalachian Hat Company to the Central Baptist Church, offering everything from green alien goods to gutters and insurance.
Alongside the numerous food trucks were booths concentrating on Hollywood sci-fi merchandise, new age wares, posters and T-shirts dedicated to the supernatural and the paranormal, and homegrown artwork inspired by local lore and unexplained phenomenon, such as the Brown Mountain lights.
Spruce Pine artist Russell Jones filled his stall with some of his own hand-painted, wooden jewelry boxes and other small containers portraying the area’s connection to rumored extraterrestrial visits.
An Iraq War veteran and father of three, Jones began to sell his work three years ago at the Alien Festival.
“I’ve been slowly establishing myself as an artist here,” Jones said, “and this festival has helped me do that. I’m not someone wanting a corporate job — I’m very happy doing what you see.”
Further afield from outside of Winston-Salem, venders Logan Meadows and Pamela Rhyne were selling T-shirts under their DISINFORMED brand for the second year at the festival. Both had high praise for the festival organizer, Sherry Sautner.
“We cover a lot of festivals in North Carolina,” Meadows said. “But this is by far our favorite. Sherry is an amazing organizer, the best we’ve ever worked with.”
Outside of Toe River Arts’ Kokol Gallery, staff member Nealy Andrews was making free silkscreen prints of a flying saucer. In a quick turnaround from last week’s successful Toe River Arts Studio Tour, the gallery inside now featured the glowing, tactile sculptures of Bridget Fox and Eric Daine called “Ceramadelics,” which you had to access through a blinking portal.
Back outside, the street was thronged with the festivalgoers, many cosplaying such characters as the Shadow Troopers from “Star Wars” to daleks from “Dr. Who,” although most were content with antennaed headgear or sunglasses sporting the large oval eyes associated with aliens in popular culture.