Blog

I had the fortunate chance to attend the Chastain Park Art Festival when I was in Atlanta for my son's Law School graduation.  His graduation was on Monday so we decided to go check out the Chastain Park Art Festival on May 9th.  The show ran from May 9 through to May 10th. 

The weather was wonderful, that coming from someone who just left the frozen tundra Michigan had been fighting off all spring.  It was so nice to be able to stroll along the artist's tents without being bundled up in warm winter coats.  There were people out looking for Mother's Day gifts as well as art for themselves.  People were able to stroll along the booths without having to worry about cars and traffic because this roadway was closed to any traffic.

The first booth we happened upon was the lovely Melanie Rolfes and Michael Zavison.

They had a great spot as people seemed to enter the row of booths from the side of the show they were on.  They had a huge booth with all these great large paintings that would look great in those gigantic homes that bordered the park.  Melanie lives in the Atlanta area and she said she loves this show.  She said the Spring show allows crafts for Mother's day purchases but the Fall show is all Fine Art. I did see some crafts but didn't think I saw any junk.

Next we came upon Joel Lockridge who makes fine wooden pens.  My husband seemed to be very interested in owning one of those.  I think that may be my first Christmas gift purchase of the year.  Joel wasn't too far from Melanie's booth.  As you can see, Joel had a great looking booth.                                                                                

Not too far from Joel we found Ruth Jellema.  I never saw her art work before and she had some great pieces.  Her work is so unique and any one of her pieces would look great in someone's home.   It was great getting to meet Ruth.

We walked the complete length of the show and finished up by stopping by the Chastain information booth to meet up with Randall Fox and Patrick  Dennis.  They were both great guys.  Randall treated us to a great lunch on the grounds.  It was the best pulled pork BBQ lunch.  We loved it.  Thanks Randall, we appreciated trying out the great Atlanta cuisine at the show.

Randall told us that the people around the Atlanta neighborhoods tend to stay in their own communities and don't go off into the other ones.  Chastain Park didn't really have an Art Show for their own area.  That is how they decided to start up the Chastain Park Arts Festival.  That seemed kind of strange about the neighborhoods but I heard that from someone else not connected to the show, too, later that weekend.  The Chastain Park area had big gorgeous homes bordering the park and I saw something that I never see in Michigan anymore - new home construction!  New homes are always a good sign of the economy of an area.  And those new homes will need some art work soon!

There was plenty of room for storage around the artist's booths.  They had lots of room on each side and lots of room behind the booths.  The show was one long giant strip with no one behind the booths.  Having the extra room on all 3 sides was nice as I think it was a bit of a walk to the artists parking area.  The weather was gorgeous and sunny which would have meant very hot in Atlanta.  But, this show provides plenty of shade with the park's large trees all along this road way.  This looked like a great place for a show.

I don't know how sales were as I was there first thing Saturday morning.  Hopefully, someone will let us know how things went for them.