There’s good news and bad news from Howard Finster’s Paradise Garden up in Summerville.
The bad news first – Finster Fest has been cancelled for 2020. This festival, which had been moved from Memorial Day weekend to Labor Day weekend, draws a sizable crowd each year, asserts Tina Cox, Executive Director of the Paradise Garden Foundation. It would not be conducive to social distancing measures necessitated by the COVID-19 outbreak. The National Endowment for the Arts has pledged their support of the event in 2021, which Cox says is likely to take place over Memorial Day weekend.
Now here is the good news – Paradise Garden will be the beneficiary of the sale of nearly 50 lots of art at the Slotin Folk Art Auction slated for Saturday, August 8th at 10 am. This will hopefully make up for the revenue that would have been generated at Finster Fest, states Cox. The online auction will offer 451 lots overall, 47 of them curated by the Paradise Garden Foundation.
Locate the link to the auction on Facebook by searching for Howard Finster’s Paradise Garden.
For more information on late folk artist Howard Finster and Paradise Garden, now a tourist attraction in Northwest Georgia, check out the Paradise Garden Foundation’s website at www.paradisegardenfoundation.org.