I know, multi-part posts. Some of you wish I would just trim it down. I’m working on that, but some events are just so awesomely sprawling that one article can’t cover it and they deserve the detail. I set out to limit the number of photographs I took in the first place and I succeeded in only taking around 200 over the three days. There was just so much to photograph and celebrate. It was a great weekend, from the weather to the quality of the arts and crafts and the activities available.
I’m going to start with a complaint, however. We’ve got to sort these mulit-event weekends out. No human could adequately enjoy Color Me Rad, Earthfest, the Fourth and Gill Home Tour, the Market Square Art Fair and Outdoorfest.. And there were other good events, as well. Sadly, this meant that I didn’t cover Color Me Rad or Outdoorfest. I tried to get to Earthfest, but missed it. We’re only human, planners.
That said, let’s get to it. Urban Woman and I set out Friday night for just a little walk-through to whet our appetite. The flowers on Union were our introduction to the festivities. The lady said they had been a favorite spot for the prom people walking about. They set a colorful, festive tone. She tried to get out of my picture, but I assured her I wanted her in it.
One of the themes of this year’s festival was to have art not simply delivered to the fair, but happening at the fair. This was in evidence with painters working on canvas, musicians playing their art, the great glass-blowing exhibit and on Friday night it was performance art with young people walking throughout the fair dressed, well, strangely. Bat people, people with snouts, ballerinas, Paris wearing a dress that forced her to hobble about. The apparently forlorn guy wrapped in a tarp drew the attention of a policeman who must have assumed what I did: the guy had to be mentally ill. Another person had boxes for a head and arms.
As with some other things I saw during the weekend, I wasn’t sure if they were part of the Fair or just folks out doing their own thing and letting their freak flag fly. All I know for sure is that what would have been a great evening eating on the patio at Oodles turned into a tour de force of people-watching. On the food front, the presence of food trucks certainly added to both the choices as well as the atmosphere. It’s great to see them flourishing and it’s fun to have out-of-town trucks that we don’t normally get to enjoy. I saw at least one I’d never seen before. And it certainly didn’t seem to hurt the restaurants which appeared be about at capacity.
We did walk around a bit and saw some of the work. We were really struck by the lady in Krutch Park Extension who was selling children’s books she had illustrated, as well as framed art. Her books looked like pop-up books their appearance was so three-dimensional. I also loved a lot of the glass we saw.
I’ll end the first installment with a comment on the children. There are different portions of the event tailored more to adults while others seem more suited for children. But children were everywhere and having a blast. Urban Girl and some others enjoyed simply climbing on and playing around the sculptures which are unrelated to the fair (though technically related to the festival). But the children’s section was very well thought-out this year.
I don’t know if I just missed it last year or if my memory has faded, but I this was the best year I remember for children’s activities. Obviously, face painting, coloring and ink blots had to be a part of the event. Performances directed at the children added a great deal. But I loved the old-fashioned, simple activities designed to get children active. Walking atop a wooden spool, walking a “high wire,” riding unicycles, jumping on trampolines, walking a balance beam and more had children hopping about and having a blast.
Hats off to organizers who could easily have shied away from the liability and made it all more passive. Having a chance to blow off a little steam there probably made the little ones more manageable as they sat through or walked through the more adult activities. Urban Girl, who had shied away from opportunities to hula hoop before, gave it a try and declared it her “favorite toy ever.” She wasn’t alone.
Tomorrow I’ll have more photographs of the art and a couple of the winning artists in the judging. I’ll also talk about both my perennial favorite and the single most stunning display of performance art I’ve seen in a long time.
