By Susan
Sunday will mark the 43rd annual Bel Air Festival for the Arts. It will be held, rain or shine, from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. behind the Bel Air Town Hall on Hickory Avenue.
The Arts Festival has a reputation of featuring the most accomplished fine artists, craftsmen and photographers in the area. In addition, festival visitors will find a wide assortment of craft work including baskets, furniture, quilts, iron work, florals, holiday decorations and jewelry.
This year’s event will feature a larger jewelry selection. All works are hand crafted and include styles described as contemporary, traditional, Victorian and modern. Jewelry media includes gold, silver, polymer clay, metal clay, paper, wire, fused and flame worked glass, crystals and precious stones.
A variety of food will be available with all sales benefiting the Bel Air Parks and Recreation programs. Concessions will be located in the band shell area of the park. Free shuttle bus service from the MVA parking lot on Route 24 will run continuously throughout the day.
Admission to the festival is free.
There will be continuous live entertainment on the band shell stage with roving entertainment throughout the display areas. Visitors are encouraged to bring their lawn chair or blanket and listen to the scheduled performances.
– 9:30 a.m. Harford Ballet
– 10:00 a.m. Bay City Seven
– 11:30 a.m. Members of Applause
– noon Starlighters
– 12:30 p.m. Sounding Brass
– 1:30 p.m. Upper Chesapeake Chorus of Sweet Adelines
– 2:30 p.m. Chuck Baker Orchestra
– 3:15 p.m. Silver Eagle Cloggers
– 4:00 p.m. Bel Air Community Band
Personal highlights from my visit to the Bel Air Festival for the Arts:
– Waited 20 minutes to drop $2 on a can of soda labeled ‘not for individual resale’
– Purchased a $20 green gourd carved into a likeness of Frankenstein’s Monster
– Forced into conversation with a former colleague who suddenly decided to break her employer-mandated Dagger-embargo
– Saw neat stuff that was way too expensive and reminisced about the festival as it existed about a decade ago – when it was basically a yard sale and I bought Batman comic books
– Stopped at a roadside yard sale on the way home and was bequeathed a 19th century taxidermied deer head and its detached nose. Spent the next hour reattaching the removable snout, affixing vampire fangs to the previously untoothed mouth of the white-tailed deer and hanging the new vampire-deer hybrid prominently on my living room wall.
At least you found a good yard sale after you left.
These “Arts Festivals” are mostly a waste of time. The wares they’re peddaling aren’t worth the tent they’re sheltered under, and the exibitors are self-important nebbishes.
i find the art festival tired and boring. It was hot, no decent place to sit and eat my 5.50 pit beef sandwich but in the unforgiving sun, a ton of talented way over priced art, some unfriendly vendors that only respond in one word..or less, not to mention there was no place to eat.
Oh, and the lines for food are insane. That could be solved with more vendors. Maybe i don’t want fries, pit beef, soft pretzels, or a crabcake. Where is the pizza? the burgers? The ice cream?
Needless to say i was more interested in the menu than the art that was there.
Once you have seen one primitive pumpkin you have seen them all.
Most of these so called art shows are a good place for the “band saw artists” to pretend that what they do is art. I quit attending any of these fiascoes years ago.
Dell, you get the word of the day for that. Well played, man.
neb·bish (n?b’?sh) n. A person regarded as weak-willed or timid.
There are people who enjoy the arts festivals and look forward to them each year. And each year they have gotten more crowded – better attended. As for me, I have a “crowd phobia” so I, too, enjoyed the arts festivals of earlier years much more.