Houston's Bayou City Art Festival Memorial Park Names Larry Stephenson Featured Artist of March 27-29 Weekend Event

    HOUSTON, TX, February 24, 2009 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Houston's Bayou City Art Festival Memorial Park has named watercolor artist Larry Stephenson (www.lstephenson.com) the featured artist of the nationally ranked fine juried art festival March 27-29. He will join more than 300 visual and performing artists from around the U.S. and the world at the March weekend event, ranked the #3 festival in the U.S. by the readers of AmericanStyle Magazine this month (www.americanstyle.com).

The 2009 Bayou City Festival Memorial Park (www.bayoucityartfestival.com) selected Stephenson's whimsical piece, "A Day at the Airport," as its featured artwork. In it, the artist stages a line-up of robot-like businessmen figures at the airport, while cartoon children pilot toy spaceships overhead. This light-hearted piece will grace the billboards, posters, programs and T-shirts of Bayou City Art Festival Memorial Park, a one-of-a-kind outdoor art gallery.

Larry Stephenson, who has earned two first-place ribbons in watercolor at previous Bayou City Art Festivals, toys around his Kansas art studio with antique marbles, model planes and cars, wind-up tin men and old-time funny papers as his subjects. Thanks to his playful eye and serious talent with the paintbrush, the vintage toy collector and painter has garnered multiple national art awards. Houston art lovers will view his life-like scenes with toys that are often juxtaposed in unlikely situations. Sometimes the toys are in still-life pictures, such as "Austin's Marbles," a painting of the childhood marbles of Austin Miller, his friend and Antique Americana authority, on a backdrop of a comic strip.

From 1978-90, Stephenson was selected to exhibit in many of the most respected watercolor competitions in the country, such as Exhibits of the American Watercolor Society, National Watercolor Society, Rocky Mountain National Water-media Exhibition, Midwest Watercolor Society and the Watercolor Societies of Kansas, New Mexico and Oklahoma, among others. His works were included in the National Watercolor Society Traveling Exhibition as well as in Exhibitions at the Butler Institute of Fine Art and Salamagundi Club Open Exhibitions in New York City.

Larry Stephenson sustained a successful commercial art career throughout the 1990s designing a line of poster prints and images used on hundreds of products worldwide. After selling off the publishing rights to much of his work, he decided to create a new collection of paintings that he had longed to do for many years, focusing on his vintage collectibles. He embarked on this body of work in January 2001 using a combination of gouache, watercolor and egg tempera. "This is where my heart is, " says Stephenson, a member of the Watercolor Honor Society since 2006.

Bayou City Art Festival Memorial Park will showcase 300 artists this spring, two-thirds of whom will be returning to the Festival and one-third will be first-time participants. (Close to 1,100 artists applied for the 300 positions this year, the most in the Bayou City Art Festival's history.) The three-day Houston fine arts festival, held 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., features 19 media formats, including clay, drawing/pastel, fiber/textiles, furniture, glass, jewelry, leather, metal, mixed media, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, watercolor and wood.

Starting with "'Legacy at Memorial' First Look Friday" March 27, Bayou City Art Festival transforms the park's tree-lined, 1.1-mile loop into a canopied outdoor art gallery, bursting with fine art and multi-cultural music and dance. Houston Arts Alliance produces the performing arts stage with ongoing multi-cultural musical and dance entertainment. With the park grounds as its stage, CORE Performance Company will conduct a world-premiere program. There also is an array of international food and beer and wine cafes for refreshments, plus an Epicurean Adventure of wine tastings and chef cooking demonstrations, a Festival first.

Bayou City Art Festival Memorial Park admission is $10 for adults and free for children 12 and under.

The March 27-29 Bayou City Art Festival's Emerging Artists program invites area high school students to create and exhibit their 3-D installation and 2-D art in the park. Younger children will enjoy the Capital One Bank Creative Zone, an interactive area designed for children and families to explore the fun of art. All proceeds of donations made in the Capital One Bank Creative Zone are divided equally among the Festival's participating non-profit partners.

The City of Houston, Budweiser Select, Houston Parks & Recreation Department, CapitalOne Bank, Legacy at Memorial and KTRK-TV are the Festival sponsors. The Festival is funded in part by grants from the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance.

Over the past 37 years, the Art Colony Association, the 501c(3) organization that produces the Bayou City Art Festival Memorial Park and Bayou City Art Festival Downtown, has raised more than $2.5 million for local non-profit organizations.

There is no public parking in Memorial Park. The Festival provides free shuttle service 9:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. to and from Memorial Park on Friday from Northwest Mall on IH 610 North Loop at 18th St.; and Saturday and Sunday from Northwest Mall and Downtown: Memorial Drive at Rusk, Rusk at Smith and Smith at Capitol.

For schedule. pre-sale discount purchases and further information, check www.bayoucityartfestival.com or call (713) 521-0133.

Houston art lovers can get a preview of Bayou City Art Festival Memorial Park, including Larry Stephenson's featured artwork and the entire visual and performing arts-filled weekend, starting Friday, March 27 at the first-ever "Legacy at Memorial First Look Friday," 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The nationally ranked one-of-a-kind outdoor art gallery will continue through Sunday, March 29.

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