Shoppers filled 5th and Main streets in downtown Baton Rouge on Saturday for the latest edition of the Baton Rouge Arts Market, browsing tables of handmade jewelry, pottery and paintings alongside the produce stalls of the Red Stick Farmers Market. The scene has played out on the first Saturday of nearly every month for more than two decades, giving Louisiana artists a recurring chance to sell their work directly to the public.
According to WBRZ, the market has provided local artists a platform to showcase and sell handmade goods for more than two decades, and it continues to draw vendors who count on the exposure it brings to both out-of-town visitors and the local community. The Baton Rouge Arts Market, known as BRAM, is a program of the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge, which runs it as a producer-only event — meaning every vendor must have made what they are selling.
Vendor Wayne Martin told WBRZ that visitors from other countries and states attend the market and see it as a piece of Louisiana, a sentiment that speaks to the market’s pull well beyond the Capital City. Fellow vendor Felicia Noelle said the market lets her connect with clients and share her art, the kind of direct relationship between maker and buyer that has defined BRAM’s appeal to artists for years.
A Downtown Fixture Shared With the Farmers Market
BRAM sets up at 5th and Main streets in downtown Baton Rouge from 8 a.m. to noon, running in conjunction with the Red Stick Farmers Market, according to Visit Baton Rouge. The arrangement has held for more than 20 years, with the two markets sharing the same downtown footprint on the same Saturday mornings, as The Reveille has reported…