Bethesda Fine Arts Festival this weekend!

Get enthusiastic for art, enjoyment, food & far more at the annual Bethesda Fantastic Arts Festival on Saturday, Could 14 (10am – 6pm) & Sunday, May possibly 15 (10am – 5pm)! Stroll Norfolk & Auburn Avenues to see 100+ artist booths, pay attention to wonderful new music & get pleasure from food items, wine & beer for the best weekend in downtown Bethesda.

All free of charge and also a lot of free of charge parking!

Aspects listed here.

You can see the Bethesda Wonderful Arts Pageant 2022 artists in this article.

You know what’s coming next – my awards for major artists in the present.  As a amazing juror, I can use my experienced eye from the thumbnails and 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 3 printmakers in the exhibit are remarkable — I have published a ton about Joseph Craig English from Washington Grove, MD (Booth #84) – in this clearly show John Pernell and Michael Nemnich are also quite good.

For Mixed Media, my top rated pick was Sandra Sedmak Engel, whose sensual operate is a pleasure both of those to the eye and the eros that outdoor demonstrates commonly test to remove.

There are a lot of talented photographers in the display. See them all listed here. James Richmond from Titusville, Florida (Booth #76) went to Cuba and has the obligatory photographs of old 1950s automobiles in Havana, as I recognize that the Cuban dictatorship will not make it possible for vacationers (and photographers specifically) to depart from the jailed island except if evidence is offered at the airport that images of the vintage cars have been taken.  

Pet peeve apart, Richmond has an exceptional eye for capturing the grace that is human variety, all the way from Portuguese card players in Aged Europe to beautiful indigenous ladies in Panama, to Cuban farmers in the brutalized Castro Brothers’ Staff Paradise.

It is a fantastic photograph, capturing the essence of the Cuban guajiro, his ancient Basque bloodlines still pretty cleaning jogging by means of his veins as evidenced by the telltale ear lobe, a huge smile for the American tourist on his slender lips, and a hand-rolled Habano in his mouth, the envy of each smoker millionaire close to the planet.

“Cuban Farmer” by James Richmond

In the class of sculpture, Tanya Tyree caught my attention as her sculptures struggle between proficient performance and a little bit of whimsy. What is very clear is a straight and unique eyesight being shipped by the (I suspect) extremely sturdy and skilled arms of this artist.

And the Campello choose for Greatest in Show?

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

Parachutes by Cassie Taggart

While any individual can instantly see that Taggart’s do the job discover surrealism, what she has brilliantly accomplished is to deliver a new 21st century model of surrealism, in which her expert painting skills marry it with fantasy, and the fantastical (which is distinctive) as properly as a healthy dose of narrative storytelling.  

It is “otherworldly” artwork deeply anchored in info which lives concealed in our ancestral mind.  This is function which once you get it and hang it in your household, will dominate every little thing else which you have hung on all those walls.

Go outdoors and see some artwork this weekend, talks to artists and artisans, try to eat some undesirable-for-you food items and hear to some out of doors new music.