Thousands attend Montevallo’s 2022 Tinglewood Festival

Published 4:02 pm Tuesday, September 13, 2022

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By EMILY SPARACINO | Special to the Reporter

MONTEVALLO – Montevallo’s annual woodworking art festival drew thousands of people to Orr Park for hours of wood-related activities and live entertainment on Saturday, Sept. 10.

Organizers of the fourth annual Tinglewood Festival reported a nearly perfect weather day as an estimated 6,000 attendees and more than 100 volunteers gathered at the park for the daylong event, a past Shelby County Tourism and Recreation All-Star Award winner.

“(It was a) great day to be in Montevallo,” said Adele Nelson, chairwoman of the Tinglewood Festival Committee and executive director of the Montevallo Chamber of Commerce.

This year’s festival included 45 sponsors, 50 vendors, a chainsaw carving expo, children’s area activities, musical acts, food trucks, a wooden boat race and a car show.

The 2022 Tinglewood Festival Artist Best in Class winners were: Wood Crafts – Chief’s Woodcrafts/Fred Maybee; Wood Carving – Woodturning by Herbster; Woodturning – Floyd’s Woodturning & Creations; Gourds – Nanny’s Nonsense/Beth Roberts; Furniture Making – Purple Heart Wood/John Martin; Multimedia – Lar-Ren’s Farm Woodturning/Larry Jarvis; and Best in Show – Woodturning by Herbster/Ron Herbster.

The 2022 Wooden Boat Race winners were: Shelby Emergency Assistance, first place; Montevallo Main Street Players, second place; Montevallo Athletic Club, third place; Boys & Girls Club of Montevallo, fourth place; and Rethink Education Foundation, fifth place.

The festival’s formation is rooted in the unique trees located at Orr Park, where Tim Tingle, the event’s namesake, carved faces and creatures into the dead parts of living cedar trees after an ice storm hit the area in 1993.

Organized by the Montevallo Chamber of Commerce, Montevallo Main Street and the Montevallo Arts Collaborative, the festival capitalizes on the community’s vibrant arts scene and draws on visitors’ other interests, such as the classic cars featured in Cars by the Creek and the musical acts featured on the main stage.

The Tinglewood Festival is held every September. For more information, visit Tinglewoodfestival.com or the Tinglewood Festival Facebook page.