Art

Beyond the Booths

July 8, 2026

The Artists Behind the August Return of Smash Fine Arts Festival

Featured Image: Kristin Connolly Schillaci, Prada, Fujichrome Velvia, 2017

If you caught our first look at Smash Fine Arts Festival, you already know why this boutique art festival has become one of our favorite summer traditions. As the August 8-9 weekend approaches, the better question may not be what to see, but who to meet.

Held on Fillmore Plaza in the heart of Cherry Creek North, Smash Fine Arts Festival is the brainchild of Anthony Constantino Jr., a former exhibiting artist who built the kind of show he wanted to see more of: intimate, highly curated and centered on real conversations between artists and collectors.

That makes the wandering feel different.

Kristin Connolly Schillaci, Shell Station
Fujichrome Velvia
2025

One of the first booths likely to stop visitors in their tracks belongs to Kristin Connolly Schillaci. Working with a 1970s medium-format Bronica camera and shooting exclusively on transparency film, Schillaci creates photographs that feel suspended in time. Her series Just Passing Thru captures forgotten roadside places, weathered buildings and quiet stretches of America with equal parts nostalgia and mystery.

Keoni Carlson

Just a few booths away, Keoni Carlson transforms ordinary hardwood into something that seems almost impossible. Beginning with sustainably harvested sugar maple, he turns each block on a lathe before hand carving thousands of precisely spaced concentric rings and radial lines. Using nothing more than sharpened steel, fire and India inks, he painstakingly builds the illusion of woven basketry and intricate beadwork directly into the wood itself. The result is what he calls “touchable illusions,” sculptural works that blur the line between fine art, craftsmanship and cultural storytelling. They invite the same reaction from nearly everyone: How is that wood?

Ceramic artist Wayne Gao brings another entirely different perspective. Having spent decades refining ceramic glazes and techniques, Gao creates richly textured works that balance centuries-old Chinese ceramic traditions with contemporary design. His work is intricate without feeling precious, rewarding both close inspection and appreciation from across the room.

Andrew McLelland, Stansbury Island, May 2025

And then there is Andrew McLellan, a Utah-based landscape and wildlife photographer whose work centers on the natural world and our relationship to it. His images bring wilderness into the frame with a conservation-minded eye, capturing the kind of places that feel increasingly precious because they are. Even better, ten percent of his print purchases support conservation groups, making the work feel both beautiful and quietly purposeful.

These artists are only a sampling of the nationally recognized painters, photographers, sculptors, ceramicists, jewelers and makers exhibiting during Smash’s August edition. That’s precisely what founder Anthony Constantino Jr. envisioned when he created the festival: a thoughtfully curated event where every booth offers something genuinely different and every conversation begins with the person who made the work.

New this summer, Kendra Scott joins the festival as a sponsor, a fitting addition to a weekend built around craftsmanship, design and the pleasure of discovering something beautifully made.

Our advice? Do not rush it.

Talk to the artists. Ask about the process. Step away for lunch on one of Cherry Creek North’s patios, then circle back to the piece that keeps finding its way into your thoughts. More often than not, that is the one worth remembering.