What was the Fountain Hills Fine Art & Wine Affaire?
Thunderbird Artists is based in Fountain Hills. The company Judi Combs founded in 1981 produces juried fine-art-and-wine festivals around the Valley, in Carefree three times a season, on the Scottsdale Waterfront in January and in downtown Chandler in February, and for eighteen years it kept one weekend for its own town. The Fountain Hills Fine Art & Wine Affaire (the producer used “Festival” and “Affaire” interchangeably) set about 125 juried artists along the north side of the Avenue of the Fountains between La Montana Drive and Saguaro Boulevard for three days each March, with a tasting tent of wines, spirits and microbrews, live music, food trucks and, at the top of every hour, the fountain rising at the end of the street.
It was the boutique show. Admission was $3, free for Fountain Hills residents and anyone under 18; the engraved tasting glass with six to eight tickets ran $10 to $13; a share of both went to the Sunset Kiwanis of Fountain Hills. By the producer’s numbering the first show was in 2005, the 12th in 2016, the 15th in March 2019, and the 18th, March 4–6, 2022, featuring oil painter Ken Reif, is the last edition we can document.
This is the page’s main job: to keep it separate from the Fountain Festival of Fine Arts & Crafts, the chamber of commerce’s free, 400-to-500-artist fair on the same avenue every November and February since 1974, which is thriving. People conflate the two constantly. One was a chamber street fair the size of a small city; the other was a Thunderbird wine-glass show for a few thousand collectors, and it appears to be gone.
What we can document, and what we cannot
- The producer and the place. Every source agrees: Thunderbird Artists, Inc., on the north side of the Avenue of the Fountains at 16810 E Avenue of the Fountains, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Friday through Sunday.
- The numbering. A 2016 listing calls it the 12th annual; a 2019 Thunderbird release the 15th (March 8–10, 2019); a 2020 magazine preview the 16th (March 6–8, 2020); a 2021 listing the 17th (March 5–7, 2021); the producer’s 2022 press kit the 18th (March 4–6, 2022). That sequence points to a 2005 debut, which fits exhibition records that show a Fountain Hills Fine Art & Wine Festival in March 2010 and 2011.
- The format. 125 artists in paintings, bronze, clay, glass, wood, metal, photography and jewelry; a featured artist each year (stone sculptor Carlos Moseley in 2020, Ken Reif in 2022); wine from Arizona and import labels, two Arizona distilleries and microbrew samples in the tasting tent; musicians playing continuously; free parking.
- The ending. Here the record stops. A third-party event listing shows a March 22–24, 2024 edition, which we could not confirm with the producer or the local press. Thunderbird’s own published seasons for 2025–26 and 2026–27 list its Carefree, Scottsdale Waterfront and Downtown Chandler shows and no Fountain Hills date at all, and the producer’s own website carries nothing on the show after the 2022 press kit. We have found no announcement that the show was retired and no stated reason.
What to do instead
The Avenue still closes for art twice a year. The chamber’s Fountain Festival is November 13–15, 2026 and February 26–28, 2027, free, with 400 to 500 booths and two beer gardens; our guide covers the parking, which is the whole game. For the format Thunderbird ran here, its Carefree festival is January 15–17 and March 12–14, 2027, forty minutes away by Shea and Scottsdale Road, and the Waterfront festival in Old Town is January 29–31. And the fountain itself runs on the hour from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day, festival or not.
Why a producer’s hometown show would go quiet
Thunderbird’s calendar tells the story better than any announcement. In the 2010s the company ran a longer season that included Fountain Hills alongside its Carefree and Scottsdale dates. By 2025–26 it was down to five shows, all in places with either a dense winter-resident base or a municipal partner that wanted the event: three in Carefree, where the town calls the festival its Signature Event, one on the Scottsdale Waterfront, one in downtown Chandler. Fountain Hills had the resident base but already had the Fountain Festival, a free chamber fair with four times the booths and a thirty-year head start, on the same street. A $3 ticketed show for 125 artists a week or two after a 500-artist free one is a hard sell to artists choosing their circuit, and the Sunshine Artist rankings that steer those choices celebrated the Carefree show, not this one.
The pandemic probably did not help. Listings show the 2021 edition going ahead in early March, before most people were vaccinated, and the 2022 one followed; whether 2023 or 2024 happened is exactly what we could not pin down, and a festival that fades out over two or three thin years rarely gets an obituary.
For the record
We would rather say what we know than guess. If you exhibited at or attended an edition after March 2022, or know when and why Thunderbird dropped the show, the dates and the reason would make this page better; the River of Time Museum on the Avenue keeps the town’s event history and is the natural home for the paperwork. Until then: first show 2005, last confirmed show March 2022, and the fountain still goes off on the hour.