The Bayou City Art Festival, an annual Houston-area event organized by The Art Colony Association Inc., has announced open calls for artists and college art students to participate in the fall event.
Launched last year, the Collegiate Art Collective is an opportunity for visual art students, who are actively enrolled in Houston-area colleges and universities, to exhibit their work at the festival. Applicants must be at least 18 years old. Additionally, students must apply under one of the 18 disciplines of art accepted at the festival: clay, digital (not photography), drawing, fiber and textiles, functional art, glass, jewelry, leather, metal, mixed media 2D, mixed media 3D, painting (acrylic and oil), watercolor painting, photography (digital or computer manipulated), traditional film photography, printmaking, sculpture, wood.
For the inaugural program, which served as a pilot, the festival invited a smaller group of colleges to apply. Last year they received 30 applications for the Collegiate Art Collective and selected five artists, including Tamiya Hall, Samah Hassan, and Alexi Sheets from the University of Houston; Taylor Jackson from Houston Community College; and Victoria Suarez from Lonestar Community College.
Student applications will be reviewed by an independent panel of jurors. The top six rated students will be invited to exhibit their work at the festival. Please note, invited students are expected to pay a $250 participation fee. The festival can receive payment from a college’s art program, an alumni association, private donations made to the artist, or from the artist themselves. The application deadline for the Collegiate Art Collective is Friday, June 30, 2023.
Bayou City Art Festival
The Bayou City Art Festival has also opened its general call for artists to participate in the event. The general application is open to artists from across the U.S. in any of the categories listed above, along with an additional category for artists who have participated in two or fewer festivals. On average, 700 applications are submitted each year, and 300 artists are selected to exhibit. The application deadline for the festival is Sunday, June 18, 2023.
The festival will take place on Saturday and Sunday, October 14 and 15 in downtown Houston, and is expected to see more than 20,000 attendees. Learn more about the event at the Bayou City Art Festival website.
