Do you live in praise of the pickle?

We invite artists, makers, fermenters, and devoted pickle enthusiasts to pay homage to one of humanity’s most enduring, perplexing, and delicious phenomena: the pickle!

We’re celebrating the pickle in all its forms and inviting submissions for both 2-D and 3-D artwork and our Best Pickles in Richmond jarred-pickle competition.

THE ART OF THE PICKLE: EXHIBITION

Born of preservation and transformed by time, the pickle is at once food, process, object, tradition, memory, and cultural artifact. It can be crisp or soft, sour or sweet, humble or magnificent. It lives in jars, on plates, in family recipes, at county fairs, and in the curious space between the everyday and the extraordinary.

For the exhibition, we’re looking for work inspired by the pickle, pickling, fermentation, preservation, recipes, food traditions, history, and all the strange and wonderful places the humble pickle can take us. Are you an artist and pickle lover? Submit your work today!

BEST PICKLES IN RICHMOND COMPETITION

Bring us your finest homemade, shelf-stable pickles in a sealed jar for a good old-fashioned state-fair-style competition. The competition will be juried by the official Richmond Pickle Party Festival Committee, with two main categories:

BEST PICKLED CUCUMBER


Any type of pickled cucumber is welcome. Dill, bread and butter, sour, sweet, spicy, fermented, funky, or anything in between. If it’s a cucumber and you pickled it, it’s in the running.

BEST OF EVERYTHING ELSE


Pickled carrots, onions, beans, peppers, beets, watermelon rinds, eggs, fruit, okra, garlic, or whatever wonderfully strange thing you’ve decided to pickle. If it isn’t a cucumber, it belongs here.

Pickles will be judged on texture, flavor, cut and presentation, color, and overall food safety practices. Have a green thumb? Learn more about submissions and prizes.