Delaware jewelry maker and designer Olga Ganoudis has been chosen as the featured artist for the 2018 Brandywine Festival of the Arts.
Ganoudis, who has been making jewelry, primarily in silver, for about 30 years, has built a national reputation for her work, which includes selection as the licensed jewelry designer and maker for HBO’s Game of Thrones television series.
“It is fitting that we recognize Olga for her role in elevating the arts and the craft of jewelry making in Delaware,” said Barry Schlecker of Barry’s Events, producer of the festival, scheduled for Sept. 8-9 in the Josephine Gardens of Wilmington’s Brandywine Park.
Schlecker also noted that Ganoudis, along with painter Larry Anderson and the late potter Mitch Lyons, persuaded him to revitalize the annual end-of-summer celebration in 2010. This will be the ninth year that Barry’s Events has produced the festival.
Images of Ganoudis’s work will be prominently displayed on the grounds and she will again be selling her work at her favorite location, on the south side of the festival grounds, near the Brandywine.
“It’s really all about texture,” Ganoudis says, explaining how she likes to layer different metals and stone, most often with sterling silver. “I like to give my collectors a sense of discovery, and the marriage of tones and textures enables me to achieve this with the metal,” she says.
Ganoudis shifted into jewelry design after tiring of working as an airline reservations specialist. Through a connection with a friend’s brother, who wrote the music for the ABC television series Lost, she was introduced to network executives, who eventually asked her to create a line of jewelry linked to the show’s theme. Several years after Lost ended its run in 2010, HBO executives approached her about creating a jewelry line for Game of Thrones.
Familiar faces and first-time exhibitors from at least 17 states and the District of Columbia will display their paintings, jewelry, pottery, photography and other works side by side at the juried show.
This year’s food vendors include Homegrown Café, Caffe Gelato, Waffle’n Joe, Famous Sgt. Balan BBQ and Grill, Brady’s Surf & Turf, Koi on the Go, Red Bandana Kettle Corn, and Billy Thompson’s Food Tent, plus ice cream cones and cups served by Hy-Point Dairy Farms.
Local musicians will perform original works in the festival’s Music Meadow. The full performance schedule will be posted on the festival website.
The festival, begun in 1961 as the Brandywine Arts Festival, a street fair in downtown Wilmington, has become a much-anticipated end of summer celebration, now held the weekend after Labor Day in Brandywine Park in Wilmington.
Hours are 10 a.m.-6 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 8, and 10 a.m.-4 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 9. Admission is $5; children under 12 are admitted free when accompanied by an adult. Brandywine Park is pet-friendly. Remote parking with free shuttle bus service will be available from Baynard Stadium and Salesianum School.
