East Nashville Festival Celebrates All Things Tomato Art

The Tomato Art Fest in East Nashville features the Second Line Parade — where participants must push, pull or wear their float — an entire gallery of tomato-themed artwork, and a Tomato King and Queen contest.

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

The end of summer is coming soon, so let's go south for the final installment in our tour of offbeat festivals.

BLAKE FARMER, BYLINE: This is Blake Farmer in East Nashville reporting from the annual Tomato Art Festival.

JOSANNA BANKS: I'm Josanna Banks (ph), and I'm a librarian at East High School.

FARMER: This getup - you have quite the outfit.

BANKS: It's a basket of cherry tomatoes. We're the cheery tomatoes.

FARMER: Cheery tomatoes.

BANKS: So we're cheery tomatoes. So we have a basket with lots of little beach balls and balloons.

JASON MALLORY: My name is Jason Mallory (ph).

FARMER: How do you explain this?

MALLORY: It's a little bit of Mardi Gras, and it's a celebration of the tomato.

FARMER: I mean are you a real tomato lover, or are you just...

MALLORY: I like to party.

FARMER: So if you walk around the Tomato Art Festival - far more art than tomatoes.

Do you mind telling me your name, who you are?

BARRY GERTEN: Barry Gerten (ph).

SALLY BLUE: My name is Sally Blue.

FARMER: Are these Bloody Marys that you're holding also a big part of it because I think I could get...

BLUE: Huge.

FARMER: It's time to hit the kids' corner in the Tomato Art Festival. This is Amanda Knight (ph) spray-painting the heads of small children.

Are you letting your child get her hair spray-painted?

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I am. We do it every year.

FARMER: That's the sound of a child's head getting spray-painted like a tomato.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Now you look like a tomato. And she's off.

FARMER: It's the event everyone's been waiting for - tomato-inspired fashion for dogs.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: We have some events coming up. We have some dogs coming up. And let's kick it off right now with Timmy. Timmy's a Min Pin. He's about 10 years old we think.

FARMER: OK. I still have not sampled any tomatoes, but I'm signing off as it is beginning to rain. For NPR News, I'm Blake Farmer at the Tomato Art Festival in East Nashville.

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