MAPLEWOOD, Mo. – The final day of Schlafly’s Art Outside festival has been canceled due to damage from an early Sunday morning storm.
The annual festival features dozens of artists. Saturday evening storms toppled dozens of tents at the Schlafly Art Outside Festival, leaving many vendors' merchandise in pieces.
"Due to major overnight storm damage, the festival is canceled today. We strongly encourage you to visit the artist list on our website and do what you can to help support all of the amazing local artists who came out this weekend. Head over to http://www.schlafly.com/events/artoutside/ to find the list of artists," Schlafly shared on Facebook.
Rebecca Brinkhorst runs Beqi Clothing and she's been a vendor at the festival for more than five years. But, things took a turn when she found out about the storm damage.
"I really love this show, as far as I knew they weren't predicting rain so it was kind of a surprise to me. I didn't even know about the damage until I got in my car on my way there and I checked my messages," Brinkhorst said.
She had a message from a friend asking if she needed help cleaning up the damage. That’s when the three-day art festival in Maplewood came to a halt after storms swept through the area.
"That was literally the first I had heard of it. So, I got here to assess damage and everything was just scattered," Brinkhorst said.
She found her things dispersed and some items were beyond repair, but for some of her friends and fellow vendors, the damage to their merchandise was much worse.
"The tent's gone, there is one clothing rack that might be gone, I’m still assessing because I have clothing so a lot of it has to be washed and it will probably be okay. I really feel bad for my friends that have photography and artwork and things that can’t go in a washer and dryer," Brinkhorst said.
And this all happened because of the weather which is out of their control.
"St. Louis weather is so unpredictable that you kind of have to expect that this is going to happen," Brinkhorst said.
Now she’s turning her thoughts to the future and focusing her energy on preparing for next year.
"Yeah I will be here no problem not even a question if they let me I will be in it," Brinkhorst said.
For many artist events like the Schlafly Art Outside Festival are their main source of income, so by the storms damaging their merchandise that limits their income.
A GoFundMe page has been set up to help the artists impacted by the storm.
