This weekend hosted the Wickford Art Festival, so in the afternoon we borrowed the parents’ car and drove on over to the historic village and walked around the stalls checking out the variety of artwork that was on display. There were tons of artists along with food vendors and the ubiquitous lemonade slushes that are sold at every Rhode Island event.

Wickford is a quaint little town right on Narragansett Bay. Many of the restored houses along the waterfront are from the 1700s and add to the village charm. There was a booth selling raffle tickets for various art pieces right at the main intersection. I was feeling lucky so I bought a few tickets and threw them in the spinning drum. The drawing was at four, so we had about 40 minutes to browse around.

The water was sparkling and clean with yachtees driving their dinghies to shore to have a look at the art. There was a pretty good crowd of visitors resting on benches and perusing the booths to see the paintings, photography and sculpture. At four, we went back to the raffle booth to see if we could win a piece of art while supporting the art school scholarship fund.

There were 30 donated paintings and photographs to give away. The ticket drum was full. One person even bought eighty tickets! They pulled about a dozen numbers with none of the winners being present so they were going to receive whatever pieces were left after people in attendance picked theirs. The next number they pulled was mine! I got first pick and I selected a photo of a building reflected on the canals of Venice. The photographer is known for his renditions of reflections. The raffle folks told us he had a booth down the main street towards the wharf.

We walked down and met the artist, getting the story behind the photo and the trip to Italy when it was taken. Stephen Wilson showed us the other photos from the set and we checked out the rest of his exhibit. The photos my size were going for somewhere around the $300 range. Steve wrote us a note on the back and signed it. We thanked him then walked down to the end of the street and sat on the rocks and ate a couple of clam cakes while enjoying the view.

After walking back to the car, we decided to continue down to Narragansett town beach and go for a swim. Since it was six o’clock they were no longer charging for parking or for “admittance” to the beach. We found a spot and headed to the sand. There was still a good sized beach crowd. I would have hated to have seen it earlier when it was fully loaded. The surfers were competing for the occasional little two footer that would roll in. 

We walked down the beach a ways and went out for a swim. We tried to body surf a few but they just didn’t quite have enough push. The water was crisp but the warm evening made up for it. We lounged on our towels a bit, then made our way home through the beach traffic. 

Back at the house, we reheated some of my famous chicken soup and hung out with the folks.