If there’s one thing that the people of Boulder enjoy, it’s a festival on Pearl Street. From the Taste of Pearl in April to the Downtown Boulder Fall Fest in September, residents embrace every opportunity to celebrate together in the heart of the city, no matter the occasion.

Luckily, the team at Downtown Boulder Partnership — the nonprofit organization behind many of the city’s most popular festivals — seems to have perfected the formula for throwing top-notch events along the iconic thoroughfare.

This weekend, the Pearl Street Arts Fest returns to the heart of the city with a big event that will exhibit the work of artists from Boulder and beyond. This year, the festival has become more inclusive and will feature featuring a diverse invitational of underrepresented artists.

Originally named the Downtown Boulder Art Fair, the Pearl Street Arts Fest was the first community event held on the newly opened Pearl Street Mall in 1978 and has since become one of Colorado’s longest-running art festivals.

While other art festivals in the state seem to be laden with vendors selling kitschy doodads (here’s looking at you, artisanal soap-on-a-rope makers), Pearl Street Arts Fest is juried, with each artist participating in the festival having been hand-selected from a competitive process by a panel of judges.

“Over the years, the festival has evolved from an arts and crafts fair to a more fine arts festival,” said Anna Salim, vice president of operations and programming for Downtown Boulder. “Our goal was to raise the caliber of the kind of work being showcased at this event because we have such a special demographic in Boulder. We have a dedicated community of artists, as well as a huge amount of art lovers who appreciate and value beauty and creativity.”

This year, the 44th annual Pearl Street Arts Fest will feature the works of over 100 artists from 15 states, narrowed down from a pool of 300 applicants.

The variety of art will be vast. Whether you’re on the market for a contemporary painting to warm up your foyer, a set of one-of-a-kind earrings to gift to grandma, or just looking to feel humbled by your own meager artistic capabilities, the festival offers something for everyone to enjoy and admire.

The new and diverse Artists Invitational was launched to address the historical non-inclusion of certain demographics in the arts, amplify underrepresented voices and promote diversity and equality in the arts.

This year’s invitational features six Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) artists and artist pairs, including Louise Cutler, Adderly Grant-Lord, Julio Mendoza, Corinne Trujillo, Aiko Szymczak and Latasha Greene, whose booths will be located at the 1300 block of the Pearl Street Mall.

“While artists featured in the show have become more diverse in recent years, we still have a long way to go,” Salim said. “Me and Adderly [Grant-Lord] were talking after one of our festivals, and she came up with the idea of an invitational, where we can focus and be really intentional about inviting particular artists.

“It was important for us to create space for people who aren’t already established on the typical festival circuit so that people can get out and enjoy these artists’ work without barriers.”

Salim and festival organizers acknowledged that the art world has historically overlooked these unique perspectives. This year’s festival aims to move forward in the future with more diverse voices on the roster.

Grant-Lord — a Boulder-based abstract artist — said in a March interview that she’d like Boulder to highlight Black artists for more than just February’s Black History Month. This past spring, she created and curated “Black Futures in Art,” a series that brought in exhibitions and events all over the county, spanning several months.

“I got to thinking, there should be at least three months out of the year where people can come into our city and see that we’re trying to be more diverse, and inclusive, and see us highlighting all of these Black artists,” Grant-Lord said in a March interview. “It doesn’t need to be just one month … Black art deserves more than just one month.”

A newbie and a ‘poster child’

Nederland-based artist Brent Bishop said he’s excited to make his Pearl Street Arts Fest debut this weekend.

“This actually is my third time applying to Pearl Street Arts Fest, but the other two years I didn’t get in, so I’m pretty excited to finally be a part of the festival this year,” Bishop said.

Working primarily in acrylics on canvas and wooden board, Bishop’s work often features fragmented montages, stitched together to form exaggerated, imagined versions of the environment in a contemporary approach to depicting landscapes.

“My work is like a mix between the form and the formless,” Bishop said. “I’m incredibly inspired by nature. I feel the need to incorporate it into my work. But these days, there’s always something between you and nature — whether it’s a phone, or a camera, or a building, or a telephone line — so much so that it feels insincere to just focus on a landscape itself.”

As a young boy, Bishop took several trips to Colorado and New Mexico and fell in love with the landscape and beauty of the American West. His landscapes often incorporate images of red rocks and vast mountain vistas that are depicted on canvas through shapes — giving the viewer the impression that they’re gazing upon the horizon through a window.

Bishop said his pieces are inspired by his father’s work as an architect and his uncle’s job as a painter and architectural renderer. He was very inspired by a trip he took to Santa Fe when he was younger to visit his uncle.

“I think that trip just kind of stuck with me,” Bishop said. “The forms in my art were inspired by a time when I visited an old, burnt-down church, and I looked out at the landscape through this structure. My art incorporates those elements of architecture, while also making a commentary on technology in society.”

Bishop, who works primarily out of his home studio in Nederland, spends the majority of his time creating alone. While doing art festivals is a bit of a departure from his creative norm, for Bishop, interacting with the wider community is one of the most exciting parts of the job.

“Back in the day, I was a chef, and I would sell paintings out of the restaurants that I was working at,” Bishop said. “I loved being able to watch people come in and look at my work. Some people were interested, and some people could care less, but either way, the interaction is always cool to witness as an artist. I’m excited to see how people interact with my work at Pearl Street. When you leave the studio, that’s when things actually happen.”

While Bishop is a new face on the Pearl Street Arts Fest scene, Kristen Ross has participated in the festival many times before. In fact, Kristen is the literal poster child of the Pearl Street Arts Fest circuit. Her painting, “Flatiron Sunrise,” was selected to be on 2024 festival’s commemorative poster.

“‘Flatiron Sunrise’ is a super special painting to me,” Ross said. “I painted it last year, and it was my interpretation of the view I get to see from my bedroom window. It’s a different angle than what people normally think of when they imagine the flatirons, but it’s what I see from North Boulder, and it’s the version of the Flatirons that I see most often.”

Ross creates vivid, imaginative acrylic paintings, inspired by her frequent forays into the mountains and hiking trails around Boulder. After venturing out into the backcountry, she creates her pieces by combining plein air studies, reference photos and research to bring about a final painting that combines unconventional colors and dynamic, wavy lines to represent the natural landscapes.

“Flatiron Sunrise” is a perfect example of Ross’ Work — the use of bold, flowing lines and bright, saturated pink colors warmly beckons viewers to see the Flatirons through Ross’ eyes.

Ross’ artwork not only celebrates the beauty of nature but also plays a role in its conservation. In recognition of the value of the outdoors, Ross donates a portion of her proceeds to the National Park Foundation.

“I paint for myself, but in sharing my work with others, I’ve learned that it can really inspire people,” Ross said. “I think that my pieces can help people remember a good memory that they have of being outside, and remind them to go get out in nature and enjoy the beauty that we have here. And in that doing, maybe my work will inspire them to want to protect nature, too.”

Check out the new Artist Invitational, Bishop, Ross and the dozens of other fine artists at this year’s Pearl Street Arts Fest, kicking off at 3 p.m. Friday. Admission to the festival is free — and so are the City of Boulder parking garages on Saturdays and Sundays. Fore more information, visit PearlStreetArtsFest.com.