Early on the first Sunday of August, twenty-five painters will start unpacking easels along Bridgeway, on the hillside stairs, and out among the houseboats. They are the invited plein air roster for the Sausalito Landscape Festival, and for five days they will treat the town the way most visitors treat it on a single afternoon: as a subject to be looked at closely and reported back accurately.
If you already live here, the useful reframe for August is that the waterfront is briefly a working studio rather than a ferry-day destination. Three overlapping calendars make that true, and knowing where they sit against each other changes the shape of a resident's week.
Twenty-five easels, and a jury show with nine hundred entries behind it
The Landscape Festival runs through the whole month at the Sausalito Center for the Arts at 750 Bridgeway, but the interesting week is the front end. During the opening week, a select group of invited plein air painters paint on location throughout Sausalito, and visitors may encounter artists working along the historic waterfront, in hillside neighborhoods, among the houseboats and nearby parks. Paint Out Days run August 2 through August 6. That is the window when a walk from Dunphy Park down to Gabrielson can put you behind three or four painters trying to solve the same view under different light.
The jury show that hangs alongside those wet paintings is doing something bigger than it looks. The festival received 934 entries submitted by 398 artists, which puts it among the largest exhibitions of its kind in the Bay Area. The exhibition, juried by Carolyn Meyer, is on view at the Sausalito Center for the Arts from August 5 through August 27. Meyer is the Director of the School of Painting at San Francisco's Academy of Art University, which is worth knowing because a juror shapes what a residents see on the walls more than any curator does. A painting school director tends to reward strong drawing and honest observation over easy postcard views of the bay.
Two dates on the SCA calendar matter if you plan to go once. The opening party is Sunday, August 9 from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m., followed by an awards reception from 5:30 to 7 p.m., with special awards presented for Best of Show, Second, and Third Place. Show up for the awards half if you want to see which pieces the juror rewarded and why the choices might surprise you.
Friday evenings at Gabrielson, distilled
The other August fixture is the free concert series at Gabrielson Park, and the 2026 season has a specific shape worth committing to memory rather than checking a flyer for.
- Friday, August 14, 6:30–8 p.m. The Volker Strifler Band, playing blues, rock, jazz, and Latin, sponsored by the Sausalito Working Waterfront Coalition.
- Friday, August 28, 6:30–8 p.m. The Anthony Paule Soul Orchestra featuring Willy Jordan on blues and soul, with the Sausalito Community Boating Center as the sponsoring nonprofit that night.
This Friday-night tradition started in 1996, the summer concert series is free and family friendly, and the format lets you enjoy an evening on the waterfront with lively bands from your picnic blanket or reserve a nightly table for six. Concerts are every Friday during the summer months at Gabrielson Park in downtown Sausalito, and lawn seating is free. A practical detail for residents who avoid downtown on Fridays out of habit: parking at street meters is free after 6:00 p.m., while hourly parking in metered areas along Bridgeway sits between $2.50 and $3.00 per hour, and downtown public lots run $2.00 to $4.00 hourly. Bring your own dinner if you want to. Guests are permitted to bring their own food and beverages to the park.
One change to the ambient experience this season is small but real. Jazz and Blues by the Bay is going reusable, and the City of Sausalito is piloting a reusable food ware program to reduce single-use waste. If you have been to a Friday show for years, that is the visible thing that will feel different at the food line.
The season closes at the end of August, but the city has quietly extended the calendar. Two added shows in 2026 run September 4 through 25 from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m., meaning early-autumn Fridays now carry a little of what used to be strictly a summer routine.
Two smaller shows that reward the detour
The Landscape Festival is the loud event of August. Two quieter shows are worth timing.
Up at 8 Princess Street, PAINT Art Collective is presenting Stars and Shapes by William Brewer from July 10 through August 10. If you are walking down the hill to Gabrielson on the second Friday of the month, you can catch Brewer's show on the way and land at the concert with time to spare. It closes the day after opening night at SCA, which means the first weekend of August is the one window where the whole art calendar sits in overlap.
The other one is a single evening. On Saturday, August 1 from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m., the Jerry Garcia Birthday Art and Music Show brings Tony Saunders and Keystone Revisited to the Sausalito Center for the Arts for two sets of music that Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders played five decades ago. Tony has Jonny Mojo on guitar and Stephanie Harwell Mandella on vocals alongside Scott Guberman. Same weekend the plein air painters are setting up down the street. Same building where the juried show hangs a few days later. If you were going to attend one thing at SCA all month, this is a defensible pick because it is the smallest audience you will find in that space in August.
A resident's August, roughly
Rather than list every event, here is a walkable version of the month as I would actually use it.
- Saturday, August 1, early evening. Walk to SCA at 750 Bridgeway for the Jerry Garcia tribute. Eat before or after at Cultivar at 690 Bridgeway, which is a Jazz and Blues by the Bay season sponsor this year and worth knowing as a neighbor of the festival more than a stop for tourists.
- Sunday, August 2 through Thursday, August 6. Take your usual walk. Look up. The invited painters will be working outdoors, and part of the point of the exhibit is that residents get to watch a painting come together in the setting it depicts. These live painting days offer a rare glimpse into the plein air tradition where artists respond directly to the landscape, capturing fleeting light, atmosphere, and color in real time.
- Sunday, August 9, 4:30 to 7 p.m. Landscape Festival opening and awards at SCA. Best day of the year to see how a working painter reads Sausalito, because the wet paintings from the previous week are hanging next to the studio work of the jury show.
- Friday, August 14, 6:30 p.m. Gabrielson Park for the Volker Strifler Band. Pack a picnic, park after six on Bridgeway, walk in.
- A weekday between August 5 and August 27. SCA is open through the month at 750 Bridgeway. Go on a slow Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon when the gallery is quiet and the paintings can breathe.
- Friday, August 28. Anthony Paule Soul Orchestra at Gabrielson, the final show of the summer run before the added September dates.
If you would rather anchor the month to a single decision, make it the second weekend. August 8 and 9 are the only two days where the plein air paintings are freshly hung, the Brewer show is still up at PAINT, and Friday night's concert is behind you rather than ahead. That is the compressed version of what Sausalito's August 2026 has to offer, and it is more than most residents realize is on the calendar in a single week.
The rest of the year, Sausalito's art scene reads as a supporting player to the waterfront itself. For about four weeks in August, that ratio flips. If you have lived here long enough to have stopped noticing the view, watching twenty-five painters try to render it is a reasonable way to see it again.
When you want a locally informed read on what changes around Sausalito, from calendars like this to property values, I am always glad to talk. Reach out through Rick van der Wal any time. Let's Connect.
