One of my favorite spots in Texas is having a big ‘ole art fest and YOU’RE INVITED! Seriously, Rockport is one of the best kept Texas vacation secrets. It’s a quick 3-hour drive down south, and you enter a small town oasis complete with yummy restaurants, gorgeous beach relaxing, and small town charm. Best time to visit? Next month at the Rockport Art Festival.
2022 Rockport Art Festival — July 2 and 3
I actually wrote a FULL guide to the town in early 2020 after Rockport recovered from Hurricane Harvey. The spot was then walloped by the pandemic too, but now is back to being a hotspot tourist attraction! Click here for my Rockport guide.
This summer, there’s no better weekend to plan your visit than 4th of July weekend. Why? In addition to the holiday, Rockport is hosting its annual art festival. The Rockport Art Festival is a two-day affair on the town’s festival grounds. Meet with the state’s best artists and take home some of their gorgeous works.
The festival was founded in 1969 as a way to stimulate the Arts economy in town, an emerging art colony on the Texas Coast. Since then, it has become a staple of the summer season on the coast – over 120 artists sell their work to over 10,000 art buyers. It’s the who’s who when it comes to local artists and collectors!
Rockport Art Festival also serves as a fundraiser for Rockport Center for the Arts. Proceeds go towards creating and sustaining the many free to low-cost programs hosted by Rockport Center for the Arts year-round.
Festival tickets are sold online and in-person. For ticket buying and pickup, visit either:
- RCA Gallery (401 S. Austin Street) between 10am – 4pm, Tuesday – Saturday
- At the Festival Grounds (1500 E. Laurel Street) between 8:30am – 6pm Saturday and between 8:30am – 5pm on Sunday
VIP tickets include access to both days for $15 and day passes are $10.
SUPER IMPORTANT: You just HAVE to check out the 54 annual Rockport Art Festival poster when you’re there — it’s a really big deal. Every year, a committee gathers to select one master artist — this year’s 2022 Rockport Art Festival Poster Artist is Jeffrey Neel McDaniel. Rockport Center for the Arts will select one of McDaniel’s paintings to create and sell both a poster and a giclée. The original will be auction as the final lot at the Art Auction on July 1.
The poster celebrates both the work of art and the 54th Rockport Art Festival. The giclée is a higher quality 50% reproduction of the original work with a half-inch border of white on Canson Aquarelle Rag. The giclée process uses pigment based ink (not the typical dye-based ink of home printers) which gives truer color that won’t fade as easily. The giclées are all signed and numbered by the artist and cost $200 each.