Fill out this form to email this article to a friend
Art
Mainsail: For your viewing pleasure
Organizers behind the Mainsail Arts Festival conduct a careful screening process to find the artists for each year's show.
By LENNIE BENNETT
Published April 19, 2007
ST. PETERSBURG Mainsail Arts Festival sets up this weekend, a temporary village of white vinyl booths sitting at the edge of the downtown waterfront in Vinoy Park. From near and far, 270 artists will come to show their work, hoping for lots of sales. And the possibility of snagging the $10,000 Best in Show award. They aren't there by chance or luck. The artists you see have been culled from more than 1,000 applicants in a process Mainsail's volunteer organizers have perfected over the course of the event's 32-year history. "Our only guideline," says Mainsail's chairman Lisa Wells, "is to pick the best." Wells and her committee of 23 don't select the artists. That's done by a group of five arts-savvy people that changes each year. Several months before Mainsail, for four or five hours, they sit in a conference room as slides of the applicants' work are projected, four from each artist. Three of them are of individual works and one is of the artist's booth, "to make sure an artist has more than just three good pieces," Wells says. There is no discussion and each screener has only that one opportunity to rank an artist on a scale of one to five. Except no one can choose the number three. "They have to make a decision," Wells says, "and not be neutral." The scores are tallied and the top 270 the most the park can hold make the Mainsail list. Which is one reason why an artist you saw a previous year might not be around the next. Or why there might be more paintings than jewelry in a show. "The mix of mediums always seems to work out," Wells says. "But if we didn't have anything good in metal, for example, we just wouldn't have it in the show." Wells, a volunteer with the festival since 1983 and its chairwoman for the past five years, says the Mainsail committee has never overridden the screeners' decisions, even though, she says, "sometimes I'm surprised at who's not chosen." The artists go through a second elimination process at the show when the guest judge, an arts authority and preferably an out-of-towner who isn't familiar with local artists, selects the 50 winners who receive a total of almost $50,000 in prize money. The Best in Show winner and the 10 selected for Awards of Excellence ($1,500 each) are invited back for the next Mainsail without going through the screening. The final judgments, and often the most important to the artists, are made by you. Your validation through your wallet is the main reason they're here. Lennie Bennett can be reached at (727) 893-8293 or lennie@sptimes.com Mainsail Arts Festival Hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday at Vinoy Park, Bayshore Drive and Seventh Avenue N, St. Petersburg. Categories include oil/acrylics, ceramics, wood, metal, jewelry, fiber, glass, wood, watercolor and photography. Entertainment, food vendors and free children's art activity tent. Admission is free. Young at Art is an exhibition of art by 300 Pinellas County students that, like the professional art, is judged. For information, go to mainsailarts- festival.org. Behind Mainsail Years: 32 Artists: 270 Volunteer committee size: 23 Paid staff: 0 2007 judge: Dean A. Porter, director emeritus of University of Notre Dame Snite Museum of Art, author and painter. Volunteers for two-day event: 200-300 Budget: About $100,000 Expenses: Mostly prize money and entertainment Income and in-kind: Sales of T-shirts, posters, vendor fees, artists' fees ($250) and sponsors. Most co-sponsors, such as the city's Department of Leisure Services, provide needed services rather than cash. Schedule Saturday Noon-1:45 p.m. 97th Regimental String Band (traditional American songs) 2-3:15 p.m. Wholly Cats (swing, surf, jazz, rockabilly) 3:30-4:45 p.m. JoDell (country) 5-6:30 p.m. Firefall (platinum hits You Are the Woman and Just Remember I Love You) Sunday Noon-1 p.m. Pickford Sundries (folk, Celtic, bluegrass) 1:15-2:15 p.m. Suzette Jennings and Mood Swingz (smooth jazz) 2:30-3:30 p.m. Mike MacArthur with Shawn Brown (blues and soul) 3:45-5 p.m. Tom Gribbin and the Saltwater Band (cowboy and country)
[Last modified April 18, 2007, 11:13:14]
Share your thoughts on this story
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
|
News
Fifty years ago, they were screwed-up kids sent to the Florida School for Boys to be straightened out. But now they are screwed-up men, scarred by the whippings they endured. Read the story and see a video and portrait gallery.
Print
Email story
Comment
Email editor