Perusing The Downtown Palm Beach Gardens Fine Art Festival

I stopped by the Downtown Palm Beach Gardens Fine Art Festival to look around a bit yesterday afternoon. This festival originally took place in West Palm Beach at CityPlace, along Rosemary Avenue, but due to the construction of two high-rise office towers, the festival moved to "downtown" Palm Beach Gardens, Florida last year. There was a lot of nice art on display at this year's festival, including watercolors, oil and pastel paintings, sculptures, and photography, and I thought the photographs at the booth in the photograph on the left were especially good. 

Although the art was very nice, the festival is now much smaller than it was at CityPlace, where it was a major annual event. Downtown Palm Beach Gardens is actually a suburban outdoor shopping center, and there were few trees and little tropical landscaping where the event took place, unlike at CityPlace, where the lush grounds and Mediterranean and Venetian style architecture create a really special ambiance. And I have to say, there were not that many people there yesterday, which must have been disappointing for the artists. Hopefully the festival can move back to CityPlace after those office towers are finished. I checked online and it says those two buildings will be completed in 2027. However, that is just next year, and so far, I have not seen any kind of structures rising from the construction site. I suppose it is possible to construct two high-rise office buildings (one 22 stories and one 24) in a year and a half, but I am not holding my breath. I say move the festival back to CityPlace next year and to hell with the construction. Just give art goers hardhats when they walk down that particular block.