The Dogwood Arts Festival returned this past weekend for its 64th year, showcasing local and regional entertainment, arts, food, and makers. Community has emerged as a theme in my articles for Inside of Knoxville this year, and Dogwood Arts was no exception. In what now feels like a different life, I helped wrangle a helium-filled balloon down Gay Street during the 2007 Dogwood Arts Parade, visiting the arts display scattered through various parts of downtown afterwards. The 2021 move to World’s Fair Park with added space and a solid density of events has been a good one. I felt like there was plenty to enjoy while not wondering if I was missing something.
Another benefit of the move was the performance lawn, which Urban Guy covered in 2019. Friday night’s event was hit by severe weather. One artist shared that she struggled with nearly losing her tent in the wind and standing water from the torrential rain. She was amazed when the water quickly drained. We discussed the upgrade, and standing on a nearly dry lawn Saturday confirmed the improvements were worth it.
Before diving into the events of the 2025 Dogwood Arts Festival, I wanted to comment on the number of events downtown hosted last weekend. Having worked downtown from 2004 to 2009, I’m still consistently amazed by the growth and efforts that have brought us to where we are now. Across from the festival at the Exhibition Center, USA Gymnastics hosted their Region 8 championships, drawing many visitors to the Dogwood Arts Festival afterward. The convention center hosted the Fun K-Town Board Game convention, UT Opera performed at the Bijou, and Chris Isaak played the Tennessee Theatre. The weekend was capped off with the first block party in the Old City for One Knoxville SC, who kicked off US League One play at Covenant Health Park with a thrilling 4-2 penalty shootout win. And that’s just a few of the events.
Now, let’s take a walk through the Dogwood Arts Festival!
Entertainment
Entertainment acts featured a variety of music across genres, performance acts and more. I enjoyed several bands throughout the day on the Performance Lawn, including singer-songwriter Maggie Tharp, whose sound really matched my tastes. I also enjoyed Lazarus Lake, who will make their first album debut here in Knoxville this week, and Atlanta-based performer (and elementary school music teacher) Mom Friend.
Over on the Amphitheater stage, I enjoyed the Singing Seniors performing some “oldies” from my teen years and the very end of Southern Taps Clogging Company’s performance. I just missed seeing the UT Steelband, who were setting up to perform when I had to head to the shuttle to catch the soccer match.
Arts
Anyone who’s been in Knoxville for a while knows the past insults to the city’s appearance, whether being called a “scruffy little city” by the Wall Street Journal who doubted our ability to host the 1982 World’s Fair or John Gunther’s 1947 travelogue “Inside U.S.A.” in which he stated “Knoxville is the ugliest city I ever saw in America, with the possible exception of some mill towns in New England. Its main street is called Gay Street; this seemed to me to be a misnomer.” The Knoxville Garden Club responded to Gunther with a program of beautification that would celebrate the natural beauty and arts of Knoxville. That response became Dogwood Arts.
Art remains at the heart of the Dogwood Arts Festival. The 2025 festival hosted a variety of local and regional artists who work in various media. Dogwood Arts presented six Outstanding Artist awards and a Best in Show award going to Egenolf Ceramics (Adam Egenolf).
The following six artists were chosen for Outstanding Artist awards. I visited each artist and captured a photograph of them with their work. Click on the link above each photo to visit their websites.
Erin Adrian Art
Penny Dobson
Rayan Downing of Dismal Creations
Amy Haggard of Makist
John Lee of Clohn Art
Marge Luttrell Encaustics
Congratulations to each artist!
The Maker City
One of the more recent additions to Dogwood Arts programming is the Maker Experience. Courtney Hendricks, COO of the Knoxville Entrepreneur Center, told me that Maker City “put[s] together programming, opportunities, community, connections for makers that want to make a living doing what they love. So in tandem with Dogwood Arts, we help pull together different workshops and demonstrations.” Workshops were available for $10 throughout the weekend. Hendricks said that they had people teaching blacksmithing, whittling, soldering and felted pens, to name a few.
She added that the event had artists from several maker categories who helped get everyone familiar with Knoxville being the Maker City. The event grew from previous Dogwood Arts Festivals’ smaller demonstrations to multiple locations with demonstrations and workshops on all three days of 2025. Hendricks noted that “Knoxville was named the Maker City in 2016. There were some makers in the area that went to an Etsy conference, where at that conference everyone that was there was tasked with going back and trying to form lines of communication with the city and also put together an event for makers to help make a living doing what they love. And so Knoxville, the Knoxville Makers that went came back and we were the first city to actually pull it off. And so we were the very first Etsy Maker City.”
Shortly after, Mayor Madeline Rogero named Knoxville the Maker City. The non-profit Maker City organization now has a free directory with over 300 local artists. The directory connects different makers for different media opportunities and features gift guides.
My first maker visit was insPYRE, who were leading a workshop on welding. insPYRE is working to open a school for welding.
In the main tent, Knox Makers were leading an LED Board workshop for attendees of all ages. The workshop taught the basics of LED boards.
Maker City offered over a dozen workshop classes. The Maker Experience also hosted a Cartoonist Conversation with live drawing demonstration and discussion panel as its featured event.
The National Cartoonists Society
One of the highlight events for me, Cartoonist Conversations, included artists Alex Saviuk, John Rose, Robert Pope, Greg Cravens, Bill Holbrook, and James ‘Doodle’ Lyle. The artists were in town for the annual meeting of the Southeast Chapter of the National Cartoonist Society and illustrate some of the most famous comic strips and books.
Cartoonist Robert Pope illustrates children’s books and graphic novels, primarily the Peanuts Gang: Snoopy, Woodstock, and Charlie Brown. He’s worked on books with characters like Scooby Doo, Batman, and most of the Cartoon Network characters like Powerpuff Girls and Dexter’s Lab. He said that the group was “here in Knoxville for our Southeast National Cartoonist Society chapter weekend, where we discuss business and have seminars and lectures about technique and work…and just get together so we can all get out of our houses and away from our lonely drawing boards.”
He said that the partnership with Dogwood Arts this year was thanks to Mark Simon, the Godfather of Storyboards, who made the connections. He added, “it seemed like a perfect fit to bring our drawing and our books…and visit the public out here and have a good day.”
Alex Saviuk started in comic books in 1977, working for DC, drawing Green Lantern, Green Arrow, The Flash, Superman and more. In 1986, he went over to Marvel and within a year, was drawing Spider-Man. After drawing the X-Files comic, he worked on the Spider-Man newspaper strip with Stan Lee for over 20 years until Stan passed away.” He’s been drawing the Phantom and doing variant cover work for Marvel and DC in recent years. Dogwood Arts was his first time visiting Knoxville. I have quite a few Saviuk books in my personal collection, and it pleasure meeting him.
When asked about the popularity of sequential art today. Saviuk said, “I think it’s popular because people, number one, enjoy looking at the art. Number two, they just enjoy the marriage of art and story. And as far as the popularity and why it still continues, a film is really comic books in sequentially cinematic form. If you were to break down a movie into shot by shot, it is sequential art. And directors to this day still use sequential art storyboards that’s done by various people to help the production crew get a good idea of camera placement, etc.”
Robert Pope added that “society is very stressed out and people are working hard. There’s an awful lot of things going on in the world. It’s always good to have a release and have something that is entertaining and escapist and allows you to maybe laugh or cry and just get away from your own problems for a moment or two.” A large crowd gathered, and a lucky few got to walk away with the live sketches.
Community
In addition to the great local food trucks from around the area, local community groups had a chance to come out and advertise what they offered and gave a chance to become involved in their missions. This aspect of community is something I loved about this year’s festival. The chance to learn about amazing people and groups throughout out area always gives me hope about what is happening in our part of the world.
Photo Gallery
