Back in the year 2000, after having lived in Carmel-by-the-Sea for five years, I volunteered to put a website together for the Carmel Art Festival. At that time, the annual plein air competition was already seven years old, but it was apparent that it needed to get some marketing help to bring it into the 21st century.
At that time, I was building the first website for the City of Carmel-by-the-Sea and several art galleries in town. This was the start of Internet marketing on a big scale to reach people and save pricy printing and mailing costs. The market was going into a slump, and to continue with the festival meant costs needed to be cut. (Nowadays, the Carmel Art Festival is pretty much paperless!)
Over the years, I took a more active role in actually organizing the Carmel Art Festival, and am now one of 3 members of the board who actually run it every year--with the help of a lot of dedicated volunteers. In fact, we are all volunteers, all proceeds go towards Youth Art, the next generation of artists on the Monterey Peninsula. Timewise? It now takes up several weeks of my time just preceding and during the annual May event. It's strictly a labor of love!
Over the years, public events in Carmel-by-the-Sea have come and gone, but the Carmel Art Festival remains a much loved event that brings top plein air painters to our area. They are juried into the event and, the 60 each year who get into the event, paint the beautiful scenery of the Monterey Peninsula over a 2 day period. These are then auctioned off to art collectors and those who appreciate art and come from all over to purchase them.
The benefit to the City of Carmel-by-the-Sea is that the event perpetuates its "artist colony" beginnings, when artists came and lived and painted in this beautiful area.
The Carmel Art Festival is also a FREE event that is held in Devendorf Park and closed-off adjacent Mission Street. Anyone can come and view the paintings that have been created during the actual art festival. Yes, the paintings are still considered "wet" when purchased.
The benefit to the merchants of Carmel-by-the-Sea is that these attendees will over several days fill up all the hotel rooms, and restaurants, wine tasting rooms and boutiques are busy. And the City of Carmel-by-the-Sea is happy because it collects taxes from the event.
So, yes, I believe I give back to my community of Carmel-by-the-Sea which has been good to me over the years.
Note, this is my entry into the July "giving back to my community" contest.
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