ART IS FOR EVERYONE
Art is for Everyone
Celebrating 45 years of the Fine Arts Festival
By Jenna Biter
Push through the double front doors of Campbell House and you’ll find refuge from the dog days of summer boredom. The walls and halls and nooks and crannies of the home of the Arts Council of Moore County’s first floor galleries will be bursting with art, from ceilings to baseboards.
Cats and dogs will chase each other across canvases, children will laugh in watercolor, and painted flowers will forever be in bloom. The doors to the Fine Arts Festival at the Campbell House galleries, 482 E. Connecticut Ave., Southern Pines, are flung open wide beginning July 23. The only theme is art.
Proudly put on by the Arts Council since 1980, the annual exhibition gives amateur and professional artists alike a time and place to show and sell their work. “As long as it’s suitable for public viewing,” says Chris Dunn, the executive director of the host organization, with a smile.
In its 45th year, the Fine Arts Festival fills the sprawling brick mansion with about 250 artworks each summer. Participants can submit one or two pieces. So long as a submission meets requirements — no bigger than this, no heavier than that, no older than two years, etc. — the art will make the show. “Anybody 16 and above,” says Kate Curtin, the Arts Council’s program and art gallery director.
Beyond that, the barrier to entry is a modest $20 or $30, depending on council membership. “I’ve enjoyed being part of this exhibit,” says Ellen Burke, a regular festival contributor. “And I love that my adult students participate in it.”
Burke is a retired arts educator who traded golden years in New England for arts festivals on Connecticut Avenue. She lectures at the council, helps award arts scholarships, and sometimes instructs workshops en plein air watercolor painting. Somewhere in this year’s show, you might see her study of a garden in the dead of a Massachusetts winter or a simple watercolor of peas in a pod. Although Burke made the move south, residency isn’t required to participate in the festival. Submissions come from across the county, the state and beyond.
Wander through the White Gallery or the Brown Gallery and somewhere you’ll find a horse studying its reflection in a pond, a scene painted by Betsey MacDonald. She’s a science-turned-art teacher who’s entered the festival consistently over the past decade despite living in horse country — not of the Sandhills, but of Rhode Island. When a good friend packed up and moved to North Carolina, she connected MacDonald to the Arts Council.
“I was crushed, but we’ve remained friends, and she set up a show for me,” MacDonald says.
The Fine Arts Festival began as a way for local artists to improve their skills, and showcase and sell their work. That first year, the exhibition hung at the Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities, across the street from its current home in the Campbell House.
“I don’t know the timeline, but we eventually landed here. And this became our galleries,” says Dunn, gesturing to the rooms of the historic house around him.
An Army spouse, Jo Tomsick moved to Sanford during the COVID pandemic. She’s pressing toward a full-time career in gallery art and, during her time in North Carolina, she’s pressed hard. Tomsick held her first solo gallery show, “Of a Feather,” at Sandhills Community College in 2023 and ships her art to galleries across the United States. “I have a piece that’s actually in Tokyo right now,” says Tomsick, a glimmer in her eye.
Last year, she submitted an oil painting to the Fine Arts Festival, her interpretation of how the princess might have felt in Hans Christian Andersen’s The Wild Swans. The painting won best in show and just sold a couple of months ago.
“I was mind-boggled,” Tomsick says. “People actually want the art that I make, which is so cool.”
Once all submissions have been delivered but before they have been hung, a judge looks everything over and selects winners. Since awards are assigned across a wide spectrum of seven categories spanning oil painting to photography, the judge must be a versatile veteran of the art industry and not locally connected. This way the art of the usual participants is unfamiliar, and submissions remain anonymous. Blake Kennedy, clay studio manager of N.C. State University’s Crafts Center, will shoulder the burden in 2025.
Every category has a first, second and third place award, each with a monetary prize, as well as an unlimited number of honorable mentions. Whether a piece wins or not, all the works hang throughout the Campbell House galleries, not necessarily by category but by what goes together, like, for example, a quiet set of blue florals entered by Paula Montgomery.
As many artists do, Montgomery started by copying masterpieces. She excelled at the practice and enjoyed it until someone nudged her in the direction of developing her own style, one that’s grown into something bold, geometric and fun.
Ulli Misegades was similarly motivated. As a child, she was told by a teacher that she “had no gift.” It’s the very sort of comment that might turn the faces of art educators like Burke and MacDonald purple. Fortunately, the callous remark didn’t stop Misegades from picking up drawing and watercolor during sleepless nights when her children were young. Eventually, she led a portrait group in Cary, and her art has won awards and been published in newspapers and magazines like The Pastel Journal. “I love children and I love dogs,” says the grandmother of six. “Those are my favorite subjects, and that’s what I usually enter.”
After an exclusive preview night for businesses and individuals who commit to making purchases, there will be a public opening reception the first Friday in August, from 6 to 8 p.m. Typically, it’s standing room only, not by design but necessity; more than 300 people attended last year. The popular event will likely remain cozy until the Arts Council completes its capital campaign for a 1,700-square-foot gallery addition to Campbell House.
Guests will nibble and sip as they swirl about the exhibition, looking for winners and determining their own. At that point, the only medalists not known will be the Sara Wilson Hodgkins Best in Show — which is revealed during the evening’s awards ceremony — and the Lee Barrett People’s Choice, which will be tallied from paper slips after the exhibition ends August 27.
“It’s never been the same,” Dunn says about the two biggest accolades. “To this day, it’s never been the same.”
