Floridiana Festival & Highwayment Artist Show January 29, 2011

On Saturday, January 29, 2011, from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm, the 10th edition of the popular "Floridiana Festival & Highwaymen Artist Show," a celebration of vintage Florida memorabilia and souvenirs, will be held indoors at the historic Garden Club of St. Petersburg.

This annual show features an abundance of old roadside attraction kitsch, as well as vintage Florida art and old tropical decor. Plus, many of the Florida Highwaymen artists will be participating.

Featuring Florida kitsch spanning the range from alligator ashtrays, flamingo figurines, and citrus-shaped radios, to postcards and other fun ephemera from the Sunshine State's old parks and hotels, the Floridiana Festival brings together premier exhibitors and collectors of vintage Floridiana. Serious collectors will enjoy the selection of citrus and cigar box labels, carved alligator canes, and souvenir sterling silver spoons and hotel china from Florida's "golden age of souvenirs," while more casual collectors of kitsch can find postcards of bathing beauties, alligator purses and other Florida fashion, including vintage Aloha shirts.

This is a great chance to meet and mingle with the Florida Highwaymen artists, who will be selling their beautiful Florida sea and landscape paintings. The Florida Highwaymen were a group of 26 artists (one woman and twenty-five men) who traveled Florida’s roads (mainly on the east coast) in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, selling their art from the trunks of their cars. They targeted the many new small motels, doctor’s and lawyer’s offices that were popping up along the roads, and often sold their paintings while they were still wet! Although the surviving artists are now well into their 60s or 70s, their art work today is as beautiful as those pieces they painted almost 50 years ago.

The beautiful hall of the Garden Club is located at 500 Sunset Drive South, at the intersection of 5th Avenue South and Park Street in St. Petersburg, next to the intracoastal waterway. Show admission is $6.00, with children under two years $3.00. For further information, call (727) 421-0441 or visit www.hulahula.biz