The 61st Beaux Arts Festival
The weather was perfect on the UM grounds this weekend. The 61st annual Beaux Arts Festival took place in what was a cloudless, sunny and perfectly breezy Coral Gables. As soon as you walked under that welcome banner and strolled into the artsy maze with the cool wind stroking your face, you knew you were in for a treat.
But the weather was just the icing on the cake - the event had much more going for it than the benefits of the kind Miami “winter.” 
There was art for all the likes—an ample variety of mediums, colors and hues. If you didn’t like the contents of one tent, you could go to the next and be in a completely different world. And there was plenty of that to go around. You could be there all day and you would still not be done exploring.
But what stood out to me the most were the tents that oozed vibrant, fresh, lively, modern, “cool.” And I guess I wasn’t the only one; the most crowded ones were indeed those with the “happy-go-lucky” type of pieces. You know, the ones with breathtaking nature paintings that transported you, the ones with the fun, funky, child-like drawings, the ones with a mesh of the sweetest colors on the palette, the ones with mixed, innovative mediums, the ones with a vivacious feel. 
Maybe it was a mixture of the bubbly music playing in the background, the aroma of pretzels, ice cream and lemonade and the hovering, perfect blue of the clearest Miami sky, but you really didn’t care much for downers. Your senses were all indulging in sweet little treats and your vision wouldn’t want to do anything contrary.
The not-so-visited tents had some treasures, too…But their dark, gloomy hues were quickly glanced at and forgotten. The metals, the bronzes and the ceramics didn’t seem to be crowd favorites, either. I guess they just didn’t quite fit the atmosphere.
It was definitely an event worth making the drive and enduring the Gables traffic for - great music, incredibly diverse crowds, artists with backgrounds from all over the world displaying their best stuff and best of all - no entrance or parking fee.
