The Blackstone Valley Art Association is proud to host the FREE 2026 Community Art Show! The public is warmly invited to participate! This show is open to all forms of artistic expression. We would love to see watercolors, acrylic paintings, oil paintings, sculptures, pottery, mixed media, drawings, pastels, photography, cyanotypes, and other forms of art.
THERE IS NO THEME. Your art can be about any topic at all! We celebrate the diversity of our artistic community. All levels of artist warmly encouraged to participate!
When:
October 17th to November 14th, 2026
Where:
BVAA Open Sky Uxbridge Community Gallery
5 South Main Street
Uxbridge, MA 01569
There is a TON of free parking immediately next to this building. It is fully and easily handicapped accessible.
BVAA Open Sky Uxbridge Community Art Gallery Information
Entering the Show
The theme is wide open. Any topic can be addressed as long as it is family-friendly. Artwork can be any size. That being said, please contact us first if you plan on bringing anything over 20″ x 30″ in size. We need to arrange for space for those separately.
All wall-hanging items must be properly wired for hanging. Our hanging system does not work with saw-tooth or triangle hangers. If you are new to preparing artwork for shows, read our page on How to Mat and Frame a Photo. Please also check out our Show Terms and Conditions
Submissions
To submit your entries use our BVAA Online Submission Form. This show is free to participate in. Each artist may submit up to two items. The deadline to submit is Saturday, October 17th 2026 at 3pm EST.
Drop Off of Works
Work must be dropped off on Saturday, October 17th between 10am and 3pm. All work which is brought in will be hung (as long as it is properly wired and is family-friendly). We do not “jury” the artwork, picking and choosing which art will be in the show. We allow all artists to participate. Please ONLY bring your artwork in on Saturday, October 17th. BVAA staff need to be present to sign in the artwork, and we are only there at that day and time.
Reception
We will be having an in-person reception at the Uxbridge gallery on Friday, October 30th from 5-7pm! We would love to see you there. This is also a Halloween party! Family, friends, and community members are warmly welcome!
Pick Up
Pick up is on Saturday, November 17th from 10am to 3pm. If you aren’t able to make that, please contact us for other arrangements.
Voting is done by the community! Please cast your votes for first, second, and third place. Each person can vote for those 3 places. You can email votes to info@bvaa.org, vote in person, vote on the video, or in any other way that reaches us! Voting is through November 13th 2026 so we can give the winners their certificates when they pick up their artwork on Saturday Nov 14th.
With some voting shows we have a ‘closing reception’ to hand out prizes. In this case, though, we have our reception in October so we can also celebrate Halloween / the Macabre show as a pop-up show. And the holidays are so busy that having two receptions (one for this show, then one for the next Great Gifts show) in quick succession would be a challenge for peoples’ schedules. So we will announce winners on social media and in our newsletter on the evening of Fri Nov 13th.
Community Show History
This art show, originally called “Tapestry”, was begun by Alternatives as an annual community art celebration. This show was running by 2010, and maybe began earlier. When the BVAA began handling the Uxbridge gallery space in 2016, we took responsibility for continuing this Tapestry show. Up until 2022 we continued to call this art show “Tapestry” to indicate it represented all types of threads from the community coming together.
Unfortunately, every time we referred to this show as “Tapestry”, many artists thought it was a fabric arts show and wouldn’t enter. Even when we attempted to make it clear that all types of art were welcome, artists remained confused and skipped the show. To counter this issue, in 2022 we updated this show’s name to “Diversity”. We aimed to represent our goal to bring in a diverse community of artists. However, people then thought the topic was specifically about Diversity.
So starting in 2024 we simply called this a Community Art Show!
Address any questions via our BVAA Contact Information
We look forward to seeing your artwork!
Inspiration from Past Shows
Here’s the video walkthrough from the 2023 art show:
Here are the winners from our 2023 show!
Here is the 2021 Community Art Show to get some ideas!
Here’s the 2018 show video:
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