Bethesda Fine Arts Festival this weekend!

Get fired up for artwork, amusement, foodstuff & more at the once-a-year Bethesda Fantastic Arts Festival on Saturday, Might 14 (10am – 6pm) & Sunday, Might 15 (10am – 5pm)! Stroll Norfolk & Auburn Avenues to see 100+ artist booths, pay attention to good tunes & enjoy foods, wine & beer for the great weekend in downtown Bethesda.

All free and also a lot of free parking!

Details right here.

You can see the Bethesda Fine Arts Competition 2022 artists below.

You know what is coming up coming – my awards for top rated artists in the present.  As a good juror, I can use my skilled eye from the thumbnails and website 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 3 printmakers in the demonstrate are outstanding — I’ve written a ton about Joseph Craig English from Washington Grove, MD (Booth #84) – in this clearly show John Pernell and Michael Nemnich are also rather fantastic.

For Mixed Media, my prime pick was Sandra Sedmak Engel, whose sensual operate is a satisfaction both to the eye and the eros that out of doors displays generally test to eliminate.

There are a good deal of proficient photographers in the present. See them all here. James Richmond from Titusville, Florida (Booth #76) went to Cuba and has the obligatory shots of previous 1950s autos in Havana, as I realize that the Cuban dictatorship will not let vacationers (and photographers in particular) to depart from the jailed island except evidence is introduced at the airport that images of the classic cars and trucks have been taken.  

Pet peeve aside, Richmond has an exceptional eye for capturing the grace that is human form, all the way from Portuguese card gamers in Aged Europe to gorgeous indigenous women in Panama, to Cuban farmers in the brutalized Castro Brothers’ Personnel Paradise.

It is a great photograph, capturing the essence of the Cuban guajiro, his historic Basque bloodlines nevertheless really cleaning operating via his veins as evidenced by the telltale ear lobe, a huge smile for the American tourist on his thin lips, and a hand-rolled Habano in his mouth, the envy of every smoker millionaire close to the planet.

In the category of sculpture, Tanya Tyree caught my focus as her sculptures battle involving proficient performance and a little bit of whimsy. What is clear is a straight and one of a kind eyesight currently being shipped by the (I suspect) incredibly robust and proficient fingers of this artist.

And the Campello pick for Finest in Show?

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

Parachutes by Cassie Taggart

When anyone can instantly see that Taggart’s function check out surrealism, what she has brilliantly finished is to provide a new 21st century version of surrealism, where by her proficient painting skills marry it with fantasy, and the fantastical (which is distinctive) as perfectly as a nutritious dose of narrative storytelling.  

It is “otherworldly” artwork deeply anchored in knowledge which lives hidden in our ancestral brain.  This is function which the moment you buy it and dangle it in your residence, will dominate all the things else which you have hung on individuals walls.

Go outside the house and see some artwork this weekend, talks to artists and artisans, eat some terrible-for-you foodstuff and pay attention to some out of doors audio.