The Elora Festival is inviting artists to submit images that will serve as the background for marketing material for its 2010 season.
Submissions can be paintings, photography, and other two-dimensional art, no larger than 14 by 24 inches, vertical.
The competition first ran last year for the festival’s 30th anniversary. Fifty-five submissions were received, including one from Australia.
General manager Jurgen Petrenko said, “I was really impressed with both the diversity and the high quality of the images that were submitted. I knew at once that we had to make this an annual event.”
The festival has a tradition of music reflected by fine art imagery, including works from A. J. Casson, Barry McCarthy, Joel Masewich, and Ken Danby. Minutes from a 1979 board meeting mention an art exhibition to be run in conjunction with what was then Three Centuries Festival.
That competition was taken over by the Elora Arts Council in 1985, and is now the popular Insights, which runs each summer at the Wellington County Museum and Archives and is the longest running juried art exhibit in Ontario.
Three awards will be given. Third place is $500; second is $1,000; and first place prize is $1,500, and the art will be used on marketing materials for the 2010 season.
The deadline for submissions is Jan. 15. The top three entries will be unveiled at the 2010 festival launch on April 14.
Additional information and entry forms are available on the Festival website, www.elorafestival.com/ART.shtml.
The 31st Elora Festival runs from July 9 to Aug. 1.