NOTE: This page uses cascading style sheets (CSS) to present the content in the best possible manner. If you are reading this message, then you do not have a standards-compliant browser or CSS (or JavaScript) is not enabled in your browser, and the page will not appear as the designer intended. Please visit The Web Standards Project for details and for information about how to upgrade your browser.

 

Grape murals remain a festival highlight

By Deanne Lowenstein
News-Sentinel Copy Editor

Every September residents from all over the Lodi-area pay tribute to the sweet fruit that helps the local economy flourish.

The Lodi Grape Festival and Harvest Fair lives up to its name with the mural contest, where locals turn grapes grown in the Valley into large artistic murals.

The contest features eight groups of 8 feet by 12 feet murals, and eight other size murals all containing hundreds of thousands of various grapes.

The process of creating the murals has changed in the more than 50 years they have been featured at the festival. Now they are made by affixing the grapes to wood pieces that have been lined with aluminum foil. Each section of the grapes is separated by various borders.

The festival’s theme this year is “California Dreamin’,” but Festival Manager Mark Armstrong said the murals’ themes are always extremely creative and secretive.

“It is a huge secret between the groups. (The murals) are a lot of work,” he said, adding that on top of the time each group works on them at home, there is another week spent on the festival grounds to get them completed and set up.

A fairly new addition to the mural extravaganza is the commodities contest. The murals in this contest are made up of fruits and vegetables that are grown throughout the county.

The commodities murals have been a positive addition to the contest, Armstrong said.

“Our rules are really lax on the commodities murals. We encourage people to be creative,” he said, adding that the five-year-old contest has grown every year since it was added.

More than two dozen 4 feet by 4 feet murals have been entered into the commodities contest this year.

A lot of the entries for both contests come from local schools, Armstrong said.

“It is a great way for school classrooms to earn money,” he said.

The murals will be displayed in the pavilion throughout the duration of the festival.

Prizes begin at $1,000 for first place in the grape mural contest and $250 for first place in the commodities mural contest.

Armstrong says there can be more than one first place winner in both contests.

Groups competing this year include: Victor School, Lodi Garden Club, Omega New, Live Oak 4H, Alpine Victor 4H, Mokelumne River Parent Club, Lodi FFA, and Tokay Vica.