Grapeview Water & Art Festival coming Saturday

The Grapeview Community Association hosts the 29th annual Grapeview Water & Art Festival from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at the Fair Harbor Marina on the Grapeview Loop Road off state Route 3.

Fifty-one Northwest artists will display and sell their wares, including watercolor and oil paintings, jewelry, sculpture, wood, glass, photography, fabric arts, and more. Children can enjoy such free activities as boat building and decorating, crafts, face painting and the Kids Fishing Derby.

The food includes steamed clams, shrimp cocktails, hamburgers, hot dogs, grilled cheese sandwiches, corn on the cob, homemade apple, and peach and berry cobblers. Patrons can enjoy live music.

For $2, golfers get five golf balls to hit toward a hole on a barge in the water, donated by Taylor Shellfish. LakeLand Village provides the prizes. Taylor Shellfish also donated 300 pounds of clams for the festival.

Proceeds from the food sales and hole-in-one golf event will fund scholarships for graduating seniors at Shelton and North Mason high schools and to agencies and nonprofit organizations in Mason County.

No commercial vendors are allowed at the event. "We bill it as an old-fashioned summer community event for all ages," said Margaret Campbell, chair of the event.

Campbell said the festival is blessed with community supporters. Mason Transit Authority provides a bus and driver to shuttle people to the event. The Mason County Sheriff's Office provides a deputy. Mason County Garbage and Recycling donates its services.

Campbell said the festival wouldn't be possible without its two co-sponsors: Fair Harbor Marina and the Port of Grapeview, which provide the land for the festival. A new partner this year is the Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group, which will host a kid's activity.

The inaugural festival in 1994 included croquet, horseshoe pitching and volleyball. An estimated 1,000 to 1,200 attended last year's festival, Campbell said.