Thirty artists from around the corner and around the country will showcase and sell their art in Downtown Bryan this weekend as part of the 7th annual Street and Art Fair. 
Artwork ranging from woodwork to sculptures and from beadwork to printmaking will be for sale alongside free music, food and a “Texas-sized” steamroller printmaking competition.
 Artists will include figures like Barbara German, whose art in places locally, such as Napa Flats and Charles Wallace, who has been featured in art galleries all over the United States.
 Amanda Reynolds, the events and programs manager for Downtown Bryan, said the broad amount of art is what makes art fair appealing for everybody.
“There is very affordable art at the art fair and there’s very high end pieces at the art fair, so there’s really something for everybody,” Reynolds said. “If you’re an art collector you can come out and find that piece you’re looking for, and if you’re just looking to buy your first piece of art ever, there’s affordable art at art fair too.”
 Committee member of the art fair and owner of The Purple Turtle art studio, Le Hale, said art enriches the community.
 “If you see areas deficient in commerce, in academia, in anything you can look back and it will always come back to fine arts — their fine arts are missing,” Hale said. “People want to move to an area with creative thinkers and places with their creative outlets. Every other answer is at the touch of a button, but you can’t do that with creativity.”
 Kristy Petty, owner of The Village Café, and Greta Watkins, artist and frame gallery owner, started the Street & Art Fair in April 2009. Petty believes the fair has put an emphasis on the importance of local art and culture in the Bryan-College Station area.
 “The festival idea for me was to train the B-CS area to buy art because there is not a lot of people who buy art here,” Petty said. “Artists have trouble thriving as just stand-alone artists in B-CS because there’s not a lot of people purchasing local art. They’ll buy things from Hobby Lobby and Kirklands and World Market all day long, spending the same amount of money because there’s some sort of safety in that — someone already said it’s good. I thought a fair would be another way to introduce our community to purchasing art.”
 The fair is a Parents’ Weekend event. Singer-songwriters will perform throughout the event and there will be a kids section where children can make their own art pieces. The fair will be from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. April 9. It will be located at the 200 block of W. 26th Street.