The informality of come-as-you-are, open-air art festivals appeals to families and folks who might not normally visit the hushed, sterile environs of galleries and museums.
It's no wonder that since the Gasparilla Festival of the Arts leapt from an exhibit at the Florida State Fair to a downtown display of work by local artists, the juried show has steadily grown in size and prize money.
The fair still hosts its statewide art competitions, housing mild artworks in an expo hall where the genuinely interested mix with the momentarily curious. And the Gasparilla art fest now draws more than 100,000 visitors annually, attracts national artists with $61,500 in prize money, includes pieces ranging in style from classical to avant-garde and focuses attention on downtown Tampa, where the city hopes to implant a cultural arts district.
Spanning the Franklin Street mall and filling Lykes Gaslight Square Park, the festival runs from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, March 6, and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, March 7.
Tents showcasing the work of 300 selected artists line the sidewalks, with separate stages hosting live entertainment and children's activities.
It's fun to move slowly from exhibit to exhibit and not try to keep up with the hurried pace of the crowd, to visually sift through everything and let images sink in, give your eyes a break and enjoy an ice cream on a park bench, then go back to the artists whose work you liked best and ask yourself if they have anything your walls might like.
The categories of media on display are ceramics, digital, drawing, fiber, glass, graphics, jewelry, mixed media, painting, photography, sculpture, watercolor, wearable art and the elusive "other."
The jurors — Alan DuBois, curator of decorative arts at the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock, and Marti Mayo, director of the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston — have narrowed the field of more than 1,000 entrants to the present crop, and will further winnow that to one Best of Show winner, who will receive $15,000.
Among the area artists included in the festival are San Antonio potter Jack Boyle, known for handsome, richly glazed pieces that are as functional as they are decorative; Tarpon Springs mixed-media artist Rocky Bridges, whose abstract found-metal assemblages have earned him a fellowship from the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts; and Gulfport sculptor Nancy Cervenka, whose creations of tightly coiled 16 mm and 8 mm celluloid (vaguely resembling vortexes and horns) never fail to halt passersby and challenge them.
For more info on the Gasparilla Festival of the Arts, call 813-876-1747.
This article appears in Mar 4-10, 2004.