The planned community of Clear Lake City, which was annexed to Houston in 1977, is an outgrowth of NASA’s Johnson Space Center and oil and gas development in southeast Harris County. The city, therefore, has a high concentration of engineers and petrochemical industry employees and a large Asian American population. It is named for Clear Lake, which feeds into Galveston Bay. A variety of arts and crafts festivals take place in and around the area throughout the year.
Each fall, the Arts Alliance at Clear Lake hosts the Bay Area Houston Arts Festival at its Center in Clear Lake City. The festival features a diverse selection of arts and crafts, including jewelry, painting, pottery and photography. It showcases artists from the area, as well as those “from as far away as Bolivia and Germany,” according to the Arts Alliance website. Music, entertainment, food and children’s activities are also part of the festival.
First Saturday Arts Market is Houston’s “longest running outdoor monthly fine arts event,” according to the "The Houston Chronicle." The festival is designed to showcase the diversity of the local arts community, and includes works by photographers, jewelers, metalsmiths, woodworkers, printers, musicians and others. Vendors of such items as cupcakes, coffee, olive oil and handmade soaps are mixed in with the artists’ tents. The festival also features musical entertainment.
The Art Colony Association in Houston produces the Bayou City Art Festival Memorial Park and the Bayou City Art Festival Downtown, which raise money for local nonprofit organizations. The September Memorial Park event features multicultural music and dance groups, artists and chefs, including free cooking demonstrations and children’s projects. According to the website, the weekend-long festival “transforms the 1.1–mile trail of the park into a one-of-a-kind outdoor gallery.” In 2009, "AmericanStyle" magazine ranked it the No. 3 art festival in the country. The October Bayou City Art Festival Downtown features an outdoor gallery of artists working in many different media, along with an interactive zone for children and a performing arts stage with entertainment presented by the Houston Arts Alliance. The event takes place in front of City Hall with the Houston skyline as a backdrop.
Annually, the Houston International Festival transforms the downtown area into an arts celebration featuring a different nationality. In 2010, the festival honored the historical and cultural influences of the Caribbean, including customs, crafts, foods, dance, literature and arts. With the theme "the Silk Road" for 2012, the festival will include a special focus on fine art and high-quality imports from China and Silk Road countries on the Asian continent.
