Artfest Kingston - How I Spent Canada Day

This is the season when all the art shows, studio tours and fairs seem to take place. We like to go exploring, and things like this make for interesting stops along the way.

This past weekend it was time for the the Kingston Artfest.  This is more than your usual outdoor art show.  While it had about 150 assorted artists displaying their work, it also had much more than that.  This is a very interactive event.

One could learn various kinds of drumming, for instance, as there was a different type of drum seminar each hour, all three days.  There was everything from a Beginners Rhythm Workshop, to Taiko Drumming between the hours of 10:30am and 3:00pm.  After that an open community drum circle was held each day of the festival.  I was really interested, but we ran out of time and the sky started to promise rain.  Okay, so I chickened out.

Nearby there was an opportunity to learn to sculpt in rock. That also looked interesting, but I'd want all day to work on something like that and we were only there for a couple of hours.

At one on of the booths, I saw a little girl getting a lesson in how to work a spinning wheel.











 There were also an assortment of art classes available, for both adults and children.  I always seem to miss the timing for the ones I'd be most interested in.  Perhaps I need to get my hands on a schedule ahead of time somehow.

I spotted one of our local artists, Larry Thompson from Greyweathers Press,

and was fascinated by some interesting crafts, like these ukuleles made out of tin cans.

I see a bright future for this young fellow.  I've seen designs cut into metal objects with a plasma cutter before, but he turned some old junk into amazing works of art.

Over in another corner there was the opportunity to paint on a mural.  I remember I was there a lot later during last year's event and it was getting pretty colourful by then.

I understand there were 20 picnic tables that entire families could paint on too. At the end of the weekend there was a silent auction to determine who got to keep them.

Habitat for Humanity was ready to teach you skills while helping to build a playhouse on site too. That was also to be auctioned off at the end of the event.

At the Easel Invasion, one could paint a picture of your own. An artist was on hand to help guide you, if needed.


Nearby was a poetry tent, if that is your sort of thing.  There was also music stage, and a beer tent.

The giant puppets were back too.  Last year I saw them being operated, as they walked through the crowd, towering over us. It's hard enough to work a regular sized puppet. These ones need more than one person each to operate them.

Then there were the stilt walkers.  Some people obviously have been doing this for a long time, but what they were doing there this weekend was teaching others to do it.  I saw kids with their feet tied to the stilts and wondered what would happen if they fell.  The instructors were there to catch, I suppose, but later I saw a group of three kids on stilts walking down one of the pathways toward the food area.  They might as well have been on their own two feet, they seemed so comfortable.

If you have never been to Artfest, you should go at least once.  There truly is something for everyone.  Best of all, it's all free.  It was a great way to spend Canada Day this year.

The Road to Art

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, there are lots of arts and craft shows to attend, now that winter has supposedly disappeared.

Today we took in the Art Journey Show and Sale in Smiths Falls.  It's an annual event held at the Memorial Community Centre, and apparently this year they have several new artists.

There is a wide variety of talent presented at this show. We not only found paintings in many different styles and mediums, we also found photography, pottery, jewelry, wood carvings
and turnings, as well as folk art made from iron.  It's not a large show, but it was well attended.

It's interesting to see how Helen Nicholson seems to like to try to incorporate familiar faces such as Marilyn Monroe, Johnny Cash or Joan Rivers into her paintings of otherwise everyday scenes.

The artist who's work captured my attention today was Margaret Martin, who joined the group last fall. The works she showed today, were more interesting to me than the ones shown on the Art Journey webpage. I was especially taken with the one of a living room, complete with a bookcase full of books in the background.

If you missed this show this year, then perhaps you can catch some of the others around the area in the upcoming months. A few that I know of are:

1.  The 416 Art Kruze between Kemptville and Cardinal June 6 & 7.  We have never done this tour, but might try to combine it with a little geocaching along the way this year, if the weather is favorable.

2. Another one I've never been to, but am certainly looking forward to exploring this year is Artfest Kingston.  It's taking place between July 1 and 4 at the City Park in Kingston. This one seems to incorporate the art of music as well as the visual arts. You can even participate in workshops, or help paint a mural.  Even the kids can get involved! A sunset dinner cruise is also available in July 2.  

3.  The 17th Annual Rideau Lakes Studio and Garden Tour, July 4 &5 which basically goes from Portland to Chaffey Locks and beyond, through the back country.  It's a lovely drive, with many interesting stops along the way.  If you have never done a studio tour, this is a great one to start with.

4. And for those who don't like to drive all over to see the artist studios, you can find a lot of great art all together at the 5th annual Art in the Barn Show and Sale, at the Lombardy Fair Grounds 5 km south of Smiths Falls on Hwy 15. That will be held on July 10-12 this year. I understand they have expanded to take in a second building as well this year.  This show is always a favorite of ours, even if we don't get to go exploring to find the artists.  Don't miss it!




 

It's Finally Geocaching Time!

The Thousand Island Spring Arts Show and Sale was held in Rockport Victoria Day Weekend. We decided the weather was nice enough to finally get out to do some geocaching, so we headed in that direction, armed with a GPS full of coordinates.  

Rockport is always a busy place, but it was over run with people on Saturday. We found an area designated as event parking and set off to see what we could see around the village.  I found John Shea, whose art I've admired for the past couple of years. His paintings are uncomplicated, and striking because of it.  Nearby was another artist whose work taught me much about the use of colour.  Tricia Wilmot Savoi has mastered the art of getting my attention, and that of many others. What more could an artist ask for?  I'm ready to abandon watercolour for a while, and see if I can apply what I learned just from looking at her paintings.  Somehow, I doubt be able to duplicate the effect, but I'm stirred up and willing to try.

We would have stayed in the village longer, and even done some geocaching there, but the people were so desperate for parking spots, they didn't care if they blocked each other in or not. We decided to make our escape while we still could. 

We crossed the 1000 Islands Parkway and explored a few other artists, including a photographer, a glass artist, and a guy who made concrete plaques and mushrooms.  He reported that sales were going very well for him.

We hunted down our first geocache nearby, near, but not in a cemetery. It was just a micro though, and so, after signing and replacing the log, we journeyed onward.  We found two other caches on this day, but found more interesting things where we didn't actually find the caches.  As I've said before, it's not the treasure, but the hunt that makes it all so much fun.

We made a rest stop at the Jones Creek property of the 1000 Islands National Park.  It's too early in the season for the main building to be open, but signs directed us to a compostable toilet along the nearby trail.  I think this site was worth the stop. I know of a two story outhouse at a nearby museum. This one in the woods is not a two story one, but rather just a second story one. I've certainly never seen that before. I might add that it's a great idea though as it's a very clean place, unsmelly place..

View from the top.  Notice the trail well below.

 Traveling back along the 1000 Island Parkway, we saw a couple of families of geese, as well as some interesting islands. Some of them were not far from the mainland.

 While looking for geocaches, we found this old drain. It is inscribed "The Kings Highway 1938".  It's big enough I suspect the area wild life use it go get to the other side of the road during certain seasons. 

One of the great things about geocaching is you often learn something you didn't know before. We found out that the 1000 Island Parkway was originally built to be Hwy 401.  After the eastbound lane was completed they abandoned the project and completed it further north, leaving us with the beautiful scenic roadway we have today. There is a bike path on the north side of the road, which would have been the westbound lane and runs between Gananoque and Long Beach. The path was laid by Bell Canada and covers a Fibre-Optic line that runs through the area.

There is a place where it is very obvious that the bike path was supposed to have been a roadway as both bridges were built before they the people in charge of this project changed their mind. 

The parkway is on the right, and the bike path is on the left.  Enlarge the picture by clicking on it for a better view.

 

 

 From the right hand side of this bridge, there is a view of where an older one once stood.

We finished off our day at Tim Hortons.  So did everyone else, from the look of things.

Graduation Day

I have been busy getting ready for an art show I had agreed to be in.  Originally I thought it was just the members of our art class but later found out there were many more established artists in the show. That kind of made me nervous.  I mean, while I have shown my photographs before, this was the first time my painting would be on public display.  I always say I'm painter, not an artist, but will admit I've been working on the transition and had hopes to move on up the ladder.

About 23 of us took part in That Art Thing and it was a wonderful event.  It got it's name because, when ever we referred to it, the questions and statements always came out like, "What day is that art thing?"  "How many paintings can we bring to that art thing?"  Or, "I just finished a new painting for that art thing."  That's what we knew it by, so the rest of the world might as well too. 

The day before That Art Thing was beautiful. The weather was perfect for cleaning up the garden and doing other necessary outdoor chores before the cold weather arrives. Luckily for us, the day of the event was a little wetter and cooler.  Not so bad though, that people decided to stay home, but just bad enough that they could not do other things around the house.  It was just perfect for visiting That Art Thing.  And visiting was what they did.

At other art shows people tend to come in, look at the art, maybe talk to the artist for a moment, and then wander back out, with or without a purchase.  That Art Thing was located in a tiny village and many of the people who came in found other people they had not seen for quite a while, and not only did they look at the art, but they stayed for a visit.  It was a very happy, friendly crowd, and a really fun day.  Most of us, in fact, actually made a new friend or two. 

If I had known earlier that it wasn't going to just be our paint class showing off what we had accomplished, I probably would have shown photographs, or maybe even digital art instead.  I have more confidence with those.  But my paintings were well accepted by both the public and the other artists, so I think I just graduated. I'm not just a painter any more.  Now, I'm an artist.