Craft Vendors Showcase artistic diversity at Festival International de Louisiane
- Claire Broussard
- Apr 25
- 4 min read
It’s the largest international musical festival in the United States.
Every April for the past 40 years, downtown Lafayette has blossomed into a cultural hub of music, food and art. Locals and people from all over the world travel to experience an energy that they say can be found only here—at Festival International de Louisiane.
And the art vendors replicate this energy through multiple mediums: metal, paint and sculpture. Whether it be a retired metal artist or a young painter, Festival International provides a space for all artists to express their artistic diversity.
“I’ve aged with the festival,” said the Breaux Bridge native Randy Dauterive, who creates metal art sculptures.
The 69-year-old retired petroleum engineer attended the first ever Festival International in 1986. Since then, it has become a tradition for him and his friends to make it out to the festival annually.
“I started going to make sure I kept the record intact for consecutive years going to it,” he said.
Dauterive said he began searching for a hobby when he retired, and he discovered a welding course that piqued his interest at South Louisiana Community College. This was the spark for his business, Dauterive Metal Art.
Once he understood the methods of welding, Dauterive said he started his creative process, making pieces for his family. He never intended to create a business, but he said his children “had enough” art pieces at home and pushed him to join the Louisiana Craft Guild to begin selling his art.
Dauterive said he starts his art process with the birth of an idea. For the festival, he has focused on creating butterflies for gardens and accordions for walls, as well as other southern-inspired pieces.
To begin his pieces, Dauterive said he uses a plasma cutter, a hand-held power tool that uses a high-velocity stream of ionized gas to cut through conductive metal to create clean and precise cuts of metal. Each section is then ground into a formed shape and welded together to make the final sculpture design.
He then uses the desired finish to add color and texture to the piece. One sculpture can take 10 to 30 hours to complete, depending on the design, Dauterive said.
Dauterive expanded his business from placing his pieces in the Louisiana Craft Guild gallery to vending for local festivals in Louisiana. He also donates his artwork to charity.
“I’m a new kid on the block,” he said.
This year marks Dauterive’s third year as a craft vendor at Festival International, and he said he enjoys the opportunity to catch up with old friends while selling his art.
“It’s my favorite time of year every year,” said Dirk Guidry, the festival’s poster artist in 2022. Guidry, 39, of Lafayette, said he has enjoyed his time as both a patron and a vendor at Festival International.
He said he pitched to be the poster artist for seven years before achieving his goal, and he has hosted a booth ever since. He started his business, Dirk Guidry Art, in 2015, and he built his company from a solo effort to a multi-employee operation.
The festival has always intrigued Guidry, and he said it cultivates an environment of cultures you would never be able to experience anywhere else. He said he uses this energy to inspire his art.
Guidry said his art style is fluid, post-modern expressionism with bright color palettes. Most of his paintings and prints focus on a main representational subject that is blended with purposeful strokes and texture to express the energy of the festival.
“Festival International encompasses so many things, and that’s the beauty of it,” he said.
In 2022, Guidry partnered with a Ukrainian band to raise money towards aid for the Russia-Ukraine war. During the band’s performance, he painted live on stage and sold his piece at the end of the set. The painting was sold for $16,000.
His collections for Festival International are a seafood series, a festival musician series, a musical instrument series and a festival caricature series. Guidry’s prints range from $20 to $25, and his original paintings sell for up to $4,000.
John Paul Daniel, better known as Bebo, began vending at Festival International in the ‘90s, and he said it is one of his favorite shows he participates in. Daniel, 72, started his company, Bebo Folk Art in 1993, and he has been making the road trip to Lafayette from Nashville, Tennessee, for nearly 20 years.
Daniel started his art journey as a musician and songwriter, but he was inspired by Howard Finster, “the grandfather of folk art,” to use physical art as a place to release the emotional weight of the music business.
This was the birth of Bebo, his artist persona.
Daniel creates mixed media art, which he said consists of wood, metal and other medium sculptures that are then painted and covered with other substances like glitter and feathers. He uses the southern folk-art themes of culture and faith in his work, and it blends right into Festival International’s purpose.
“The festival is full of a diversity of people that come from all over the world,” he said.
Daniel’s art booth has a collection of southern figures: fish, blues men, guitars and written signs.
The festival is a social unity event, and Daniel said the weekend feels like a big party to celebrate his hard work. In past years, he met up with his late wife and some friends at the festival, but they’ve grown older, and his friends are taking this year off.
“The festival is always fun,” he said. “The music is great and the food is fabulous.”
Dauterive, Guidry and Daniel are hosting booths at this year’s Festival International, which runs from April 22-26. Their art also is available online through their websites, as well as on their social media platforms for those not able to attend the festival.
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