BY WILLIAM DEAN
A giddy anticipation is building up and down the North Coast. The Festival of Dark Arts is just days away.
For 3,000 lucky ticket holders, the curtain will rise on Valentine’s Day in downtown Astoria. Bands will play and stouts will pour.
To pull off its carnival-like spectacle, Fort George Brewery expects every employee to report for duty, aided by a mass of volunteers. This year’s army numbers 311.
Advance work typically starts in late summer, then builds steam. More than two dozen performers have to be booked, scores of dark beers lined up, custom art installations built, and much more.
Here’s a glimpse at how the 13th annual festival came together.
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Andee Gowing is on a stepladder, long wooden rod in one hand, cordless drill in the other.
The object of the Astoria artist’s attention is a huge skull mounted on shoulder bones the width of a sedan. Gowing built the creature out of chicken wire, wood and layer upon layer of newspaper. It was then slathered with a homemade moldable slop consisting of drywall mud, paint and glue.
“She’ll be in the middle of Duane Street,” she says with a wry grin. “Goopy and vengeful.”
On a mid-January afternoon, she’s inserting a half-dozen rods into the sculpture, which will appear to be rising from a subterranean hellscape, bursting through the pavement. The rods will support a spooky headdress, adorned with willow, heather and whatever else strikes Gowing’s whimsy.
With help from an assistant, she measures the depth of the rods and removes them. They’ll be re-inserted the morning of the festival at the street location, making it easier to transport the sculpture. It also adds to the pressure.
Gowing is tasked with decorating all of the Dark Arts venues, and with the crowd pouring in at 11 a.m. she won’t have much time.
Inside a bustling warehouse workspace, a small band of volunteers is working on 17 hanging eyes complete with internal lights. Gowing’s playlist sets the mood: a band called Sextile pounding out pulsing electronic rock.
One of the volunteers has come up with a way to make the rice-paper eyeballs bulge perfectly, leaving veiny imperfections. It’s what’s known in the studio as a “happy accident.”
Gowing surveys the scene and its coordinated chaos and gives an approving nod. She’s wearing a paint-speckled black hoodie and camo ballcap, blonde hair streaming out the back.
“I would like to be a little further along, but I’m not freaking out yet,” she says.
Still to come is a giant crawling spider (made of PVC, leather and expanding foam) and a pair of equally huge anatomical hearts that may or may not emit streams of bubbles.
The hearts are a nod to Valentine’s Day. “I Love You to Death,” is Gowing’s unofficial theme.
This is her sixth Dark Arts as an artist. For the first, in 2014, she was asked to build an altar and she did so much more – creating a gothic horror scene filled with bones and skulls. The public loved it, and so did the bosses at the brewery.
After a couple years off and some traveling, she was urged by her fans to return to the festival. She did, and immediately set out to create the most ambitious art backdrops ever.
She’s an eclectic sort, known mainly for her sculpting, but also a cook, forager and cocktail creator who puts in hours at Breakside Brewery’s Astoria pub.
What part of the Dark Arts gig does she find the most rewarding?
“Knowing that I have the idea in my head and I’m able to execute that,” she says after a moment’s thought. “Seeing people enjoying it, too, is absolutely amazing.”
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Stouts, stouts, stouts.
More than 90 of the robust beers will be poured at Dark Arts, representing inventive breweries in nine states. They’ll send two to three kegs filled with the prized brews, many of which were patiently barrel-aged.
Coordinating all those deliveries and keeping tabs on a rapidly swelling warehouse inventory isn’t easy, but Fort George has a man for that, and he’s armed with spreadsheets and a computer.
Cameron Pierce, whose normal job is managing distribution, is now doubling as a beer wrangler – in charge of the frothy tsunami that will hit Astoria in the days leading up to the festival.
It’s the third week of January, and Pierce is once again studying his master spreadsheet at the Fort’s main riverfront facility. It’s his least favorite time. The curating of the beer list is ancient history, invitees have all been consulted and suspense is building as brewers check their batches.
“It’s like a Christmas tree without any presents,” Pierce laments.
Starting in early spring, a committee at the Fort decides which breweries will receive invitations. The list evolves, deliberately, from year to year. About a dozen breweries in the current lineup are new, including StormBreaker Brewing out of Portland.
StormBreaker’s Opacus Stout medaled at the World Beer Cup in May, earning the brewers a special Dark Arts invite. Honored, they offered up a keg.
While it’s rare to have a brewery pull out at the last minute, Pierce learned the other day that a participating brewery had a poor yield when packaging their stout. Because the beer is exclusive to its membership club, the brewery had to scale back its contribution to the festival.
Based on experience, the wrangler knows that another brewery or two will ask at the 11th hour if it’s okay to send something other than the promised stout. The switch usually works out nicely.
“It’s fun to have a few surprises,” Pierce says.
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The fingers on Brad Parsons’ left hand are a blur as they race along the neck of his acoustic guitar.
His eyes are closed, which seems appropriate. It’s a soulful lick he’s playing.
Parsons will soon take the stage at Dark Arts for the first time. The Astoria singer-songwriter was supposed to make his festival debut last year but a serious illness scuttled those plans.
Fort George kindly extended a second invitation, and this time he’s more than ready.
“I’m so excited. It’s a great festival,” he says. “After last year and being not able to play and all that, it just feels like a real privilege. A real honor.”
Parsons, whose solo career started in 2016, will be appearing in a four-piece band that includes his brother on drums. It’ll be the kickoff to a breakthrough year, he hopes, culminating in a new album filled with his growly vocals and unique “American roots” music with country, rock, soul and bluegrass influences.
Just two years ago, Parsons was helping book Dark Arts bands for the Fort, where he works part-time pouring and serving. He’s relieved to be spared that burden this time around, though he’s willing to help out as needed.
The 2026 festival boasts 25 musical acts performing simultaneously on three stages, plus assorted entertainers like belly dancers and fire jugglers. This year’s headliner, The Sword, is a heavy metal band from Austin, Texas, but the lineup, as always, features nearly every conceivable musical genre.
The brewery not only books the acts, it houses band members in a reserved block of motel rooms, offers a well-stocked “green room” and handles stage set-ups, according to marketing director Brian Bovenizer, who oversees the madness.
During the festival, keeping all the acts moving along on time is one of the biggest challenges, he said.
Parsons will be performing upstairs above the pub – a space he knows well. He also knows that the standing-room-only crowd will be pumped. His 40-minute afternoon slot is tucked between high-energy bands.
“I’m going to have to really bring it, you know? Only the hits, baby,” he says. “We have no intention of taking our foot off the gas.”
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WILLIAM DEAN is an author who also writes about craft beer and the people who make it. His blog is Astoria Beer Zone. “The Have-Nots,” his latest novel, is available now.
