This year we celebrate the 28th annual Art in the Arboretum festival in Wilmington, NC. We will be open Saturday, Oct. 14 from 10am - 5pm and on Sunday, Oct. 15 from 12 - 4 pm with food trucks and live music all weekend. Tickets for Art in the Arboretum weekend are $5 and available at the gate. Admission is free for children 12 and under, current military with ID and members of Friends of the Arboretum.

The festival will launch with an Opening Reception called “Sip, Savor, and Shop” on Friday, October 13 from 5- 8 p.m. This special ticketed event for the Friends of the Arboretum members, sponsors, special guests, and general public is $35 and limited to only 300 people for the evening. Tickets for this opening reception must be purchased in advance by clicking Here. We will have live music from El Jaye Johnson, wine and beer provided by our sponsors, food by Art Centered Catering, and desserts by The Friends of the Arboretum, fantastic raffle items, and our amazing collection of Artists.

This year we will have over 75 Artist’s booths covering the beautiful 7-acre facility, throughout the gardens and inside both the Education Center and Green house. The selection of art will cover everything from painters, sculptures, jewelry, ceramics, woodworkers, photographers, and more from all over the North Carolina region.

While painting for the show “Little Treasures” at the Hillsborough Gallery of Art, Ellie focused primarily on the objects she painted, versus the objects as a stand-in for an emotional landscape. This shift in perspective was interesting, and of course, the emotional aspects revealed themselves during the painting process. The paintings for “Little Treasures” are a bit brighter and simplified compared to Ellie’s previous works, and most of them were created with acrylic paint only instead of using several mediums. Additionally, Instead of using digital collage techniques as a starting place, Ellie worked from just one photograph for most of the paintings in the show. This shift in perspective allowed Ellie to play with abstraction and texture in a new way.

“Little Treasures” also features work by two other HGA artists: jeweler Nell Chandler and ceramicist Evelyn Ward.