Bayou City Art Festival Memorial Park 2015

Bayou City Art Festival’s featured artist, Gregory Arth, is pretty easygoing when it comes to selecting mediums. “The one that’s on the easel!” he laughs. Working in a variety of formats keeps him interested, he insists. Along with painting on canvas, he’s painted murals in Cinemark theaters and on the floors of swimming pools (his work in pools garnered him a spread in a Neiman Marcus catalog) and even experimented with sculpture involving circuit boards, genres and mediums. A jury of curators, gallery owners and art collectors selected Arth as the featured artist from more than 1,000 applications. Arth, whose painting Extraordinary Dream Tree is seen on the festival’s poster, is one of some 450 national and international artists exhibiting at the three-day outdoor art festival.

One of the organizers, Sean Boyd, promises this will be the biggest incarnation of the biannual Bayou City Art Festival ever, with an anticipated crowd of more than 30,000 visitors and some 20 food trucks. Boyd says the outdoor festival appeals to both novice and veteran art collectors (and people watchers, of course). “People are talking to the artists; they’re hearing the stories behind the pieces…this is what helps develop a person’s taste for art collecting.”

The Green Mountain Energy Children’s Creative Zone includes hands-on projects led by nonprofit partners such as Fotofest and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

12 to 6 p.m. Friday; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Memorial Park, 6501 Memorial Drive. For information, visit artcolonyassociation.org. $5 to $10.
Fri., March 27, 12-6 p.m.; March 28-29, 10 a.m.-6 p.m., 2015

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Sarah Gajkowski-Hill