This weeks Austin Area Commission for the Arts guest writers are Bonnie Rietz and Mary Anne Wolesky, co-chairs of the Austin ArtWorks Festival.

Oh.  What an awesome Austin ArtWorks Festival we had this past weekend.  One person emailed us and thanked everyone for a “great marquee event.”

This was quite a year because we had a change of venue from the Historic Downtown Power Plant to the very center of downtown Austin.  Over 50 artists were featured in their individual white tents on the green space to the south of the Historic Paramount  Theater.  The demonstrating artists along with the family activities  were in the parking lot east of the Spam Museum.

Our featured artist’s prints were displayed in the Paramount Annex (former Park and Rec Office) and we had wonderfully talented musicians in three venues — Paramount Annex, outdoor stage and Austin ArtWorks Center.  (which was really hopping with people, we might add.)  And, in addition we featured nine intriguing authors in Sweet Reads.

We enjoyed traveling actors, glass mosaic creations, hair braiding, seed bead sculpture, henna, sidewalk chalk art, Beetle car painting, girls on stilts, pottery demonstrations, glass blowing, making piñatas and skateboard painting.  The exciting ethnic diversity of our community was seen all around.  Also, can you believe that we actually had a Canstruction, which was a structure using the design of one of our featured artists prints, built out of Spam cans and made and donated by the Spam Museum.

And we are not finished. We had Artrageous perform at the Historic Paramount Theater on Saturday evening and the place was rocking with music, dancing and people painting on stage.

As you can imagine, it takes many talented, energetic and enthusiastic people to pull off such a feat and this describes our Ssteering committee.  We want to thank them and all the members of their committees for their extraordinary work.

Our thanks also go out to the many donors, volunteers (over 225), downtown Austin merchants (Thanks also to many of them for staying open on Saturday and Sunday.), Spam Museum, city of Austin and Mower County.

We are very proud to be able to give seven awards to the artists because of many peoples’ generosity and we would like to share one story with you.  (We have many.)

Our City Award this year went to an artist from out of town who had not been to Austin before.  He came to Austin a couple of weeks before the festival and painted in several different locations.  He told us that the people in Austin were so friendly.  They would stop and talk with him and welcome him to the community.  He was very impressed.

The two City Council members who chose the award heard his story and chose his painting of the Utility Building to be hung is City Hall.  He sent us the following email after the festival:

“Thank you, thank you, thank you for the wonderful event.  You and the other members are the best.  It was a great show and I can’t wait until next year.”

Aren’t we fortunate to be living in an art-filled community where we can enjoy a fuller life and so can visitors coming into our community.

Thank you to everyone involved in this year’s sixth annual Austin ArtWorks Festival.

Don’t forget to mark your calendars for next year’s Festival on August 25 and 26, 2018.