Bethesda Fine Arts Festival next Saturday

Get thrilled for art, leisure, meals & much more at the annual Bethesda Great Arts Pageant on Saturday, May possibly 14 (10am – 6pm) & Sunday, May 15 (10am – 5pm)! Stroll Norfolk & Auburn Avenues to see 100+ artist booths, hear to great tunes & take pleasure in food, wine & beer for the best weekend in downtown Bethesda.

All absolutely free and also loads of no cost parking!

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You can see the Bethesda High-quality Arts Festival 2022 artists here.

You know what is coming subsequent – my awards for prime artists in the exhibit.  As a good juror, I can use my knowledgeable eye from the thumbnails and web-site visits to award the Campello awards.

For the painters I liked  Zhiyi Li (from Enfield, CT) in Booth #66, and Thomas Williams (from Chicago, IL) in Booth #78.  

All a few printmakers in the demonstrate are exceptional — I have published a lot about Joseph Craig English from Washington Grove, MD (Booth #84) – in this present John Pernell and Michael Nemnich are also very fantastic.

For Mixed Media, my best select was Sandra Sedmak Engel, whose sensual perform is a satisfaction both of those to the eye and the eros that out of doors demonstrates normally attempt to reduce.

There are a whole lot of gifted photographers in the display. See them all right here. James Richmond from Titusville, Florida (Booth #76) went to Cuba and has the necessary photographs of old 1950s cars in Havana, as I understand that the Cuban dictatorship will not enable vacationers (and photographers specially) to depart from the jailed island except if proof is offered at the airport that images of the vintage autos have been taken.  

Pet peeve apart, Richmond has an excellent eye for capturing the grace that is human kind, all the way from Portuguese card players in Old Europe to lovely indigenous females in Panama, to Cuban farmers in the brutalized Castro Brothers’ Personnel Paradise.

Cuban farmer by James Richmond

It is a great photograph, capturing the essence of the Cuban guajiro, his historical Basque bloodlines continue to pretty cleansing managing via his veins as evidenced by the telltale ear lobe, a huge smile for the American vacationer on his slim lips, and a hand-rolled Habano in his mouth, the envy of just about every smoker millionaire all-around the planet.

In the category of sculpture, Tanya Tyree caught my interest as her sculptures battle between gifted effectiveness and a bit of whimsy. What is apparent is a straight and special vision remaining sent by the (I suspect) quite robust and experienced fingers of this artist.

And the Campello select for Very best in Clearly show?

It goes to painter Cassie Taggart from Rehoboth, DE in Booth #51.

Parachutes by Cassie Taggart

While anyone can straight away see that Taggart’s operate explore surrealism, what she has brilliantly accomplished is to deliver a new 21st century variation of surrealism, in which her qualified painting talents marry it with fantasy, and the fantastical (which is distinctive) as effectively as a healthy dose of narrative storytelling.  

It is “otherworldly” artwork deeply anchored in facts which lives hidden in our ancestral mind.  This is work which once you invest in it and hold it in your household, will dominate almost everything else which you have hung on those walls.

Go exterior and see some artwork this weekend, talks to artists and artisans, consume some negative-for-you food stuff and pay attention to some out of doors audio.