Bayou City Art Festival: Even with rain, artists shine

By Farrah Madanay     10/19/11 7:00pm

Houston's fickle weather has not been kind to the festival scene this fall. Though the 40th Annual Bayou City Art Festival Downtown, held Oct. 8 and 9, enjoyed large crowds on Saturday, sales suffered when the sunny forecast yielded to a torrential downpour Sunday afternoon. Regardless, the artisans featured at the festival chalked their weekend up to a positive experience.

Todd Alexander, a mixed media artist from Atlanta, Ga., actually relished the rain's effect on the festival.

"When it rains like this, it brings the really interested people in, even if it cuts down the crowds," Alexander said.

---

---

Fat Cat Studio owner and Austin based artist Kari Stringer also expressed her appreciation for the brave patrons that remained at the festival despite the unfortunate weather. Her impromptu "15% Off, Rain Sale" sign attracted customers to her unique jewelry: earrings and bracelets hand-cut from royal confection cans and vintage tobacco tins.

Though 300 artists participated in the festival, each managed to specialize in a craft that suited their own personal niche. No two artists displayed even slightly similar styles of work, which likely was the reason the festival committee chose to invite them from a pool of 1,000 applicants.

The festival showcased art from a multitude of disciplines, including clay, metal, wood acrylic painting and digital photography. The artists themselves also varied from up-and-coming art hobbyists to decades-seasoned professionals. John Hernandez of Memorial, Okla. expressed gratitude for his renewed invitation to return to the festival for a third year. His unconventionally curved vessels, with split stitch inlay and water color coating, were inspired by the natural patterns of the trees, grains of wheat and Impressionist paintings.

A nod to the Industrial Revolution and the increasingly mechanistic world, Carl Zachmann of Fergus Falls, Mn., drew crowds to his mesmerizing kinetic wall fixtures made of found metal.

"I took a lot of stuff apart as a kid and played with a lot of Legos. That's where I learned the basics," Zachmann said of his roots as a machine artist.

In contrast to Zachmann's machine-inspired art, Steven and Cheryl Ward of West Dundee, Il. aspired to return to nature with their prairie grass organic wall art. The Wards created their abstract wall hangings by hand painting dried cattail reeds, gluing the separately painted reeds side-by-side onto a support and then framing the work as a whole.

"I deliberately try to not make a pattern with the colors of the reeds, otherwise it would be too factory-like," Cheryl Ward said of her prairie grass wall art compositions.

Art festivals not only fascinate visitors, but they also allow the artists to view the products of their talented peers. Though a shared appreciation for art leads to an outwardly amicable environment, it's almost impossible for the vendors not to notice the crowds gravitating toward particular booths.

Houston-based artist Arne Van Rossen asked, "What is art?" as he watched his fellow vendors sell duplicates and prints while his one-of-a-kind lamps generally went unnoticed. Van Rossen proudly advertised his lamps, such as his distinctive cactus shaped lamp, as unique, hand-made, functional art pieces.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but art is in the intention of the artist. Why make duplicates when you can spend your time creating something new?" Van Rossen asked.

To be fair to the other artists, Van Rossen's handmade lamps not only qualified as some of the more expensive pieces of the festival, but also weren't acquisitions visitors could easily tote around as they perused the other booths.

Though the Bayou City Art Festival chiefly provided an outdoor stage to showcase visual media artists, the festival also offered a diverse selection of food vendors, interactive art competitions for festival patrons and performing arts routines. Daily performances by String Theory, a collective troupe of adventurous dancers, accompanied by live musicians, further reinforced the vitality of the Houston art scene.

Though the stormy weather ultimately led to the early closing of the Bayou City Art Festival Downtown, the artists highly anticipate showing their art at the counterpart Bayou City Art Festival Memorial Park, scheduled for spring 2012.

---