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About 250 artists and craftspeople will offer their wares to thousands of shoppers in Lutz this weekend.
By Times staff writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published December 6, 2002
LUTZ -- Birgit Bartoschek lives between Charlotte and Asheville, N.C., but this weekend, she'll be in Lutz.
Mrs. Bartoschek, an artist who paints on silk, will be selling her work at the 23rd Annual Lutz Arts & Crafts Festival, which has grown to be Hillsborough County's second-largest art festival. (The largest is the Gasparilla Art Festival.)
"A lot of artists are coming down for the winter," Mrs. Bartoschek said. "The Florida people appreciate art very much."
She will be among 250 artists and craftspeople at an event that has grown to the limits of its pine-shaded acreage at Lake Park, off Dale Mabry Highway south of Van Dyke Road. All vendors' booths were filled before September, and half were rented by artists before they left last year's festival, said Auralee Buckingham, a member of the festival's sponsoring group, the Lutz-Land O'Lakes Woman's Club.
"We have a waiting list of a hundred," she said.
The show is popular with artists because it attracts up to 35,000 shoppers at the beginning of the Christmas season.
Most of the vendors come from west-central Florida. But there is a stained-glass artist from Highland Mills, N.Y., a wood-box carver from Yadkinville, N.C., and a crafter of "fabric pets" from Cohasset, Minn.
Mrs. Bartoschek is coming for the first time.
"We heard good things about it," she said.
The Lutz Arts & Crafts Festival opens at 10 a.m. Saturday and Sunday at Lake Park, 17302 N Dale Mabry Highway, Lutz. It closes at 5 p.m. Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday. Admission and parking are free.