Coconut Grove Arts Festival Aims To Mentor Young Artists

\"\"Over 100,000 visitors are expected to walk through the gates at this year’s Coconut Grove Arts Festival.

Starting Feb. 18 at 2700 S Bayshore Dr., the three-day outdoor art festival is celebrating its 59th year and is set to feature over 280 artists and offer something for everyone with culinary displays, live performances and family areas.

“This year, we employed a new jury system, whereby we invited artists and other art professionals across the country to view all the applications and we selected those invited based on their scores,” said Camille Marchese, the festival’s executive director. “And what that does is it brings you a higher quality of art.”

The Coconut Grove Arts Festival has revamped its emerging artist program to be a more robust mentoring program to help create the next generation of art show artists. Twelve young artists are going to be part of a two-year plan that teaches them how to be roadshow artists. Each artist will have a mentor and work behind the scenes, with an end goal of having their own art booth the following year at the festival.

“The goal is to give this next generation of artists the foundation they need to begin their art show careers after completing the second year,” Ms. Marchese said. “This is our first year to do something quite this elaborate.”

The arts festival is also starting a young collectors’ club where artists have donated small art pieces that children can purchase.

“One of the reasons why I have this job today is because my mother took me to an art festival when I was 8 years old and let me buy something,” Ms. Marchese added. “I believe that as much as we need young artists, we also need young collectors.”

 

Source: Miami Today

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