Now that a featured artist has been selected, plans for the 2011 are under way.
The Art Walk festival honors one special artist each year. Los Angeles-based painter Grant Searcey is the featured artist for this year's event, which will be held June 11-12.
Hermosa Beach Art Walk president Ken Klade founded the annual exhibition to promote arts education and appreciation.
"The term 'starving artist' is heard too often these days," Klade told Patch during .
The Arts Group of Hermosa Beach sponsors the event at which local artists line Pacific Coast Highway and Pier Avenue with booths of colorful paintings or show-stopping sculptures.
Searcey, 35, who fought poor health for many years, has said that painting saved his life.
For nearly a decade, between ages 18 and 28, Searcey battled cardiomyopathy, an illness that affects the heart muscle, which he has written about on his website. He received a heart transplant in 2004.
Painting has served as a therapeutic outlet, then and now, he says. Some of his paintings feature colorful, wide-eyed sea horses and octopuses blowing bubbles.
Searcey's works will be on display, along with nearly 100 local artists, during this year's Art Walk from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Hermosa Beach Community Center lawn on upper Pier Avenue.
