Often the Carmel artistic experience is enjoyed only through a gallery window on Ocean Avenue or its surrounding streets. The annual Carmel Art Festival changes that.

Now in its 16th year, this four-day event spills art into parks and across sidewalks, blurring the boundaries between artist and audience by offering anyone in the market for some culture and beauty a chance to study local plein air painters’ techniques and pose questions while they work.

This event, centered in Devendorf Park and Mission Street between Ocean and Sixth, gives 60 juried artists two days and the entire county to pick a spot and complete a painting.

“Artwork ranges from a pick-up truck in Carmel Valley to an artichoke in Salinas to a redwood in Big Sur,” says festival board member Tammi Tharp.

On Friday at 6pm, the painters report to Devendorf. “It really is a unique experience to come and see these wonderful paintings and meet the artists who just painted them,” Tharp adds. “The paintings are often still wet.”

The artists, who have been known to incorporate certain elements of their surroundings into their painting at the request of an onlooker – one Carmel resident remembers seeing her dog spliced into a scene – include each of the last four People’s Choice Winners, Mark Farina, Terri Ford, Kevin Courter and Brian Blood, which foreshadows some healthy competition (these four winners painted Fisherman’s Wharf, the sand dunes at the bottom of Ocean Avenue, the Pebble Beach Cypress and Rocky Creek Point, respectively).

On Sunday, the festival’s award winning artists are invited to paint in a “Quick Draw,” a popular challenge in which the artists meet in the park at 9am and paint nearby until 11am, when the finished products are unmasked. Participating local galleries, meanwhile, draw guests with receptions and demonstrations.

Live music and children’s activities offer another type of stimulus. Devendorf Park hosts Derek Smith Steel Drum Duo on Friday (from 2-5:30pm), Illuminati Trio on Saturday (from 11am-2pm), followed by Nick Williams Trio (who’ll play until 5:30pm). The Rotary Club Jazz band plays on Sunday from noon until 3pm. On Saturday, the Youth Art Collective leads a Kids Make Art Day from 1-4pm, free for children of all ages.

An annual crowd favorite will anchor the action at Devendorf, where over the course of the festival, Steven Whyte and his Dolores Street studio team will complete their Sculpture-in-the-Park Exhibition, a life-sized work whose identity remains a mystery as long as the carving allows for it.

“The event is particularly special for us,” Whyte says, “because while our studio receives many visitors, the exhibition in the park sees 4,000 to 6,000 people over a few days. People realize firsthand the amount of work and care that go into these sculptures – which are ultimately valued at $50,000 to a half a million dollars and end up all over the country.”

Guessing what he’s carving has proved elusive in years past. One year he sculpted Bob Hope (which later ended up in bronze for a war memorial in San Diego), leaving the head for last – while people incorrectly ID’d it as Frankenstein’s monster and Edward Scissorhands. (The final rendering is spot on; maintaining the mystery is an art form itself.)

Other sculptures have included Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Abraham Lincoln. “This year we will have [what will ultimately become] a monument for Texas,” Whyte says. “It will be very large and very exciting.”

CARMEL ART FESTIVAL runs May 14-17 in Devendorf Park and on Mission Street between Ocean and Sixth in Carmel. For a complete schedule, visit www.carmelartfestival.org