Help Celebrate the Summer of Sculture's 10th Anniversary

The Town of Vail Art in Public Places (AIPP) is inviting painters to help celebrate its 10th annual Summer of Sculpture exhibition in Ford Park. This year the exhibition features sculpture on loan to Vail from the Denver Art Museum by world renowned artist Bernar Venet. Painters are being asked to join an afternoon of festivities co-hosted by Betty Ford Alpine Gardens to celebrate the Summer Solstice. Activities include a painting competition, a “Painted Lady” butterfly launch, dancing round a May Pole, Bravo’s instrument petting zoo, croquet games, guided tours of the Garden’s and a introduction to the Wild Side of Ford Park lead by a naturalist from the Vail Nature Center.

Artists wishing to participate in the event will have the opportunity to enter their painting into a competition. Three winning paintings will be displayed at Vail International Gallery from June 21 through June 26. To qualify, artists must be painting on-site no later than 1:30 p.m. on June 20 and are welcome to start earlier. The outdoor paintings must include Bernar Venet’s sculpture Arc 228.5° x 5. The sculpture is a 7’ high rolled steel curved shape which appears to defy gravity in its ingenious tilted balance. All paintings must be complete by 3:45 p.m. A jury will meet at 4 p.m. the same day to select the winning paintings. The winning artwork will be announced at 4:15 p.m.

This is the second year AIPP has held an outdoor painting contest in conjunction with the Summer of Sculpture exhibition. Last year, fourteen talented artists made their way to Ford Park for an afternoon of painting and a chance to exhibit at a Vail art gallery. “The artists all chose different viewpoints,” said Vail’s AIPP Coordinator Leslie Fordham. “One painter, Sally Davidson who traveled from Denver to participate, sold her masterpiece to an onlooker before the paint was dry.”