For art lovers living in San Luis Obispo who’ve attend the beloved Art in the Park events in Morro Bay and Paso Robles, the next one will be held in your hometown.
The two-day event in Santa Rosa Park runs Aug. 3 and 4 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and will offer original artwork from more than 150 artists, organizer Steve Powers told New Times.
“It’s not a swap meet, it’s an adventure,” he said. “We have sculpture, stained glass, jewelers, really exceptional work. I would say about maybe 40 percent of the show is from San Luis Obispo County and the other 60 percent is from the surrounding region.”
This includes artists from the Bay Area, Southern California, Arizona, Nevada, and Oregon.
“They love to come to this area; I mean, our weather’s great,” he said. “They get to show their work, and many vacation at the same time, so it’s a fun gig for them.”
With almost 50 years in the art business under his belt, Powers said he wanted to celebrate his half-century anniversary with a bang, and an art show in SLO was something he’d been dreaming about.
With the plan set to make the event happen, Powers needed to find the perfect place to host the event.
“I had some ideas and locations in mind, and some of them were not viable with public parking, etc., or wind, so forth. But after working with the director of Parks and Recreation, Greg Avakian of San Luis Obispo city, he helped guide us towards Santa Rosa Park,” Powers said. “It was an excellent location for the show.”
But Santa Rosa Park comes with a little problem; it only has about 113 parking spaces. With the hope of getting around 5,000 attendees over Saturday and Sunday, they needed to figure out something quick.
“They bent over backwards for us, and the Parks and Rec decided that they’re going to let us have overflow parking on the softball fields,” Powers said. “So we have parking now for 300 cars, which is more than enough for this large art show in San Luis Obispo because usually people come for maybe about an hour to a couple of hours. We turn over throughout the day maybe five or six times with the public who comes and sees the show.”
Powers has been in the industry since December 1975 when he hosted his first art show in San Diego. It was a hit.
Following that, he traveled around the Western states hosting and participating in indoor shows and convention centers.
“We traveled all over to shows in San Diego, Reno, Las Vegas, Tucson, San Jose, big events, big production, and that business sort of faded with the financial crisis back in 2009,” he said. “So, I’ve lived here in the county since ’96 and have always been interested in doing something local. So, when my indoor art show business sort of wound itself down just financially, we decided to go ahead and start doing Art in the Park shows.”
He managed his first Art in the Park event in Morro Bay in 2016 and later added Paso Robles. Meeting a bunch of cool artists along the way, he formed friendships easily, and some of those friends decided to visit SLO and show their art at this upcoming Art in the Park.
“I have a pretty extensive database mailing list of people who have shown with me over the last 10 years or so. For some, it’s a short-term business, I think they’re in and they’re out. Some people do it their whole lifetime,” he said.
New artists are encouraged to apply, and Powers said if they visit sloartinthepark.com and scroll down to the exhibitors tab, it’ll take them to a page with an online application.
“They make their deposit, they send me an email with photographs of their work and a link to their display, their website, and what their display looks like, and that’s what we jury from,” he said.
While discussing the possibility of adding future cities to Art in the Park, Powers said putting SLO in the rotation and making a SLO County trio is exciting, and he thinks in the near future it’ll stay as it is.
“Paso Robles is really receptive to the show, and we’re in Downtown City Park. We’re surrounded by all the restaurants and everything which is really becoming like a Napa of Central California,” he said. “It gets a lot of tourism now, and San Luis Obispo is like our crowning key to this region.” Δ
Reach Staff Writer Samantha Herrera at sherrera@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Aug 1-11, 2024.