FAIRHOPE — The weather cooperated and record crowds attended the 26th annual Grand Festival of Art by the Bay, held last weekend at the municipal bayfront park in Fairhope.

“The clouds parted and the sun came and and remained until the festival was over,” said Rebekah Webb, communications director for the Eastern Shore Art Center, which sponsors the event.

Organizers estimate the crowd attending the two-day art festival at about 15,000.

“That’s up a good bit over last year’s 10,000,” Webb said.

The 2007 juried show contained works by 105 exhibitors in 20 mediums, she said, adding that both local and regional artists participated.

The festival included more than visual arts. A variety of musical groups performed under the trees and Gulf Coast Authors, a Pensacola-based group, also manned a booth.

Awards at this year’s juried show were presented “overall” and not per medium category. The winners are:

• Best of Show ($1,000), Mark “Fritz” Manuel, who retired from his insurance business one year after Katrina hit his community in Diamondhead, Miss. He pursued photography as a hobby, but soon discovered he found more pleasure in painting what he saw.

Manuel is a self-taught artist working in acrylics and watercolor. He was first attracted to coastal scenery and historical architecture through his photography.

“I find it very satisfying to create a piece of art blending light, land, water and other of man and God’s creations.”

After painting for only one year, Manuel’s paintings and prints are hung in galleries and shops in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Wisconsin.

• First Place ($800), Rianna Yum-Bucher.

• Second Place ($600), Domi Williams.

• Third Place ($200), David and Ann Reif.

• Honorable Mentions ($100), Stephen Cappelli, Vernon Spicer, LawerenceTrotter and Wallace Syfert.

Works of the exhibitors were judged this year by nationally known painter Lucy Jaffe, a resident of Birmingham and Cincinnati.

She is a fine arts graduate of the University of Delaware and the College of Notre Dame, Baltimore. She has served as artist in residence at the Hambridge Center for the Creative Arts and has received awards for her painting from the Art League of Alexandria, Va., the Arlington Arts Center in Arlington and the Society of Fine Arts, Tuscaloosa, Ala. She has had one-person exhibitions in Birmingham, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., as well as Arlington and has participated in group shows across the country, including the Alabama Women Rising show and Alabama Women of the Millennium exhibit at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington D.C.

The Eastern Shore Art Association is proud to announce this year's winners:

Plans are already under way for the 2008 Grand Festival of Art by the Bay, which is scheduled for next Oct. 18 and 19.

For further information, call 928-2228 or visit the Art Center Web site at easternshoreartcenter.com.