Arts and Crafts Go to the Park

Organizers bill it as a “down-home kind of day,” an occasion when culture can go barefoot in the park.

Indeed, art comes to the people twice a year at the Woodland Hills Fine Arts and Crafts Festival, which will take place Saturday and Sunday in Warner Center Triangle Park. Sponsored by the Rotary Club of Woodland Hills, the event is in its 26th year. It features upward of 100 booths run by painters, sculptors, printmakers, jewelry makers and others, all selling their creations and competing in a juried show. Admission is free.

“We emphasize fine arts over crafts, but something is available for just about every price,” chairwoman Sheri Polak said. “It’s all things that are handmade, and the artists are there with their work. That’s a nice feature. If you see a painting you like but it won’t fit in your home, maybe you can talk to the artist and something creative will come of it.”

Along with the booths of art for sale, there will be a raffle and food stands. Various barbecue meals are on the menu.

All money raised will go to such Rotary causes in the west San Fernando Valley as the Pacific Lodge Boy’s Home and programs for foster children and battered women.

On Sunday, in conjunction with the art show, the Valley Cultural Center will present the Louis Bellson Big Band Explosion as part of its Concerts in the Park series. Admission is free. Bellson and his group will play from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. in a park adjacent to the art show.

“We’ve had him for at least the last five years and he always draws very well,” said Philip Diamond, director of Concerts in the Park. “People bring folding chairs or blankets. They can bring picnics and umbrellas and stretch out and enjoy themselves.”

Artist Robert Marble of Newport Beach has taken part in the Woodland Hills show since the mid-1970s.

“All sorts of people come-- serious collectors and people who are new to art,” he said. “The prices are much more reasonable than shopping in galleries since you’re dealing with the artist, and there’s a lot of gallery-quality art at the show.”

Marble said he will be selling humorous lithographs that he calls “professional satire”--depictions of attorneys, dentists, accountants and the like done as animals and going about their business. The signed, limited-edition works sell for about $75 framed.

Rotary member Barbara Silber, art director of the show, said she has coordinated other shows professionally, many of them in shopping malls, for the past eight years.

“This a good one,” she said. “The range of material is very wide.”

Woodland Hills Fine Arts and Crafts Festival runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at Warner Center Triangle Park, two blocks north of the Ventura Freeway at Topanga Canyon Boulevard and Oxnard Street. Free.