Sacramento Arts Festival

After missing a few years of the Sacramento Arts Festival because of the pandemic, Joe K and I were excited again to visit this once a year event! It only happens for three days in November. This time I felt like our lives were starting to have a semblance of routine and normalcy. We chose a Saturday to attend. Masks of course, were required and we were even asked to show our Covid-19 vaccine cards. I looked forward to seeing several of my favorite artists, but alas, they were not present this year, except for one. I did splurge on a lovely glass blown sea creature design by Shawn Tsai. But many wonderful artists did participate this year, making it an enjoyable day.We still made a point of visiting the regulars, seeing some new ones, and missing the ones that were not there this year.  But at least we had a full and enjoyable day making special purchases and conversing with some of the friendly people. It's nice to have more culture in our area and this show is one that makes you more aware of the beauty that people can create and inspire! The yearly tradition resumes!

It is time again to dust off the murse and head to the Sacramento Arts Festival for a great day of looking at art while listening to some mellow music. Hopefully I will find some great Christmas presents for the family at the same time.After a stop for banana nut pancakes and Belgium beer we finally made our way into the convention center while a band played some smooth jazz in the background. The first thing I noticed was that the venders had their noses stuck to their cell phones, i-pads, and Kendalls. No one seemed to be paying attention to their potential customers. Is this what our world has come to? I wanted to yell at them; "put down your phones, the real world is out here". This baffling behavior continued until I finally came across a tie salesman from Berkeley by the name of Mitchel Rubin. You might think there is not much interesting about ties, but that would be because your eyes have not crossed paths with these whimsical artistic masterpieces. Mitchel not only had regular neckties but had pre tied bow ties and bow ties that you had to tie yourself for the bow tie purest and if that was not enough to get you all excited he had whimsical artistic suspender masterpieces as well. This guy was talented! He even had matching sets.Of course my girl friend had to check out all of the handcrafted jewelry and we both enjoyed the various pottery and hand blown goods. Then my girl friend found a comfortable pair of sandal that she could not pass up and I found a couple of hand thrown coffee mugs with frogs and dragonflies to buy my sister for Christmas.We stopped for a couple of frozen mochas (this has become an annual tradition) before continuing on. It was not long before my girl friend came across a ceramic masterpiece she had to get for a family member and I came across a hand blown glass Christmas ornament that looked kind of like a sparkling avocado (I buy my daughter some kind of handcrafted ornament every year). That is when I realized that I had not bought my annual Todd Borg suspense novel yet so we went in search of the Novelist from Tahoe.After purchasing the latest "Owen McKenna Mystery Thriller" and having Todd Borg personally sign it, we had just about conquered the show when my girl friend decided that we needed to get a present for a very special friend of hers so we spent at least another hour looking for the perfect present that would most clearly express our love for this friend.It was truly another successful year at the Sacramento Arts Festival.

Great color stimulation for my baby, cool artsy kitchen accessories, beautiful art pieces with the artist there for the background of the piece. Great food, pies, and fudge!!!

This was my fist time at the Sacramento Arts Festival and I will definitely be back next year. The atmosphere was really mellow but vibrant at the same time. I also loved that my favorite pie guy was there Patricks Famous pies.

I'm surprised more people don't know about or haven't been to the arts festival in Sac. I've been attending for the past few years and am extremely pleased with the variety of artists and vendors that attend each year. Whatever you want (pictures, paintings, jewelry, ceramics, pottery, glass work) you name it, they have it there. Prices vary on the seller, but every time I've been, I always leave with something unique and reasonable.

Meh, is perfect. Way too many earrings. My wife and I bought from 4 vendors in 2015 and 2 of them were not here this year. There is some stunning art, but far too much is the same thing over and over. If you are looking for cute scarves or neat, one of a kind earrings, this is four or five stars. Rather than this being a must do (which it was this year) we are going to give it a rest for a couple of years to give the vendors a chance to freshen up a bit. I would have told the organizers this directly, but they do not have a contact us link.

A lot better than what I expected! I was pleasantly surprised. They had some great stuff and food. The only bad thing is you have to park downtown. Also, the ticket counter is cash only so be sure to bring some! The vendors, however, were able to take Visa. Thank goodness. I loved that there were local and out of town artists.