Festival Fun
The Cathedral Village Arts Festival is one of my favorite times of year. Six days of arts and entertainment all for free (but please donate). What could be better?
My two best festival decisions actually happened before the festival. First, I booked the week off work so I didn't have to choose between housework and festival fun and second I went to the Meet the Artist night on the Thursday before hand.
The Meet the Artist night consisted of four short talks by artists involved in the festival in some way. If I hadn't gone to that, I probably would have skipped the parade and picnic and missed the giant crow puppet and the Fada Dance performance. I also found out more about Swampfest and an intriguing street painting project that is supposed to happen this fall.
On Tuesday, I went to the Screening under the Steeple. The Filmpool has been part of the CVAF since the beginning with screenings of small locally made films. The two films that stood out for me were a rather grim look at postpartum depression and an experimental post apocalyptic film.
On Wednesday, after getting my picture taken with ghosts, I went to the poetry slam and got to be a judge. Being a poetry slam judge is fun in a terrifying sort of way. You have three seconds to give a score out of 10 to a poem you probably don't really understand and then get yelled at by the audience because they wanted you to score it differently, but, as the slam people say, the points are not the point, the poetry is the point and all the yelling is fun.
I didn't do a lot of Festival stuff on Thursday, but I did go to see the ghost photographs. I really like how creepy some of them were and was surprised by how different the images looked from the way I imagined they would turn out when I got my picture taken.
On Friday, I spent the evening at St. Mary's where Sylvie Walker, Post Script and The Middle Coast were playing. I hadn't heard Sylvie or Middle Coast before and new music is always exciting. Post Script were incredible as usual and hinted at new music coming soon.
Saturday was the street fair which basically means I end up running into everyone I've ever known all in one day. That actually started early as I ran into Kim and Ian (and Hanna and Ella) at the Farmer's Market and right after that I ran into Suzy (and Sully) and Robyn (and Wren and Lumon and Kit). My day just carried on like that (there's Margaret and William and Gerald) running into all sorts of people (look, Kaeli is busking) and largely failing to look at what people were actually selling (there's Terri) and getting too much sun. (You'd think after all the years of getting a sunburn on festival Saturday I'd remember to wear my sunscreen.) I watched a couple of musicians during the street fair at the new Retallack Street stage (Amy Nelson who I hadn't seen in two years and Kristan Couture who I had only seen as a violinist accompanying Danny Olliver) where I also ran into Redbeard. My brother also came to town late that afternoon so I hung around with him for a while before he went off to the Bryan Adams concert.
In between visiting with people, I also ate a lot of food including a taco and potatoes from the new Malinche food truck, a cannoli, a pork slider, a samosa, lemon ice cream, and two glasses of Horchata. Oh, and of course I had a doughnut for breakfast and I grabbed a milk shake later in the evening.
After my brother went to his concert, I went to the Holy Rosary Park and caught Private Drive and Andino Suns and then headed over to the Artesian for Ava Wild, Gunner and Smith, and Scott Richmond. That was an amazing night of music and not only did Scott play longer than I expected, he also played two encores.
Next up, Mosaic or the Puppet Festival or the Geek Crawl or the Nick Faye concert or a bit of a number of these.
My two best festival decisions actually happened before the festival. First, I booked the week off work so I didn't have to choose between housework and festival fun and second I went to the Meet the Artist night on the Thursday before hand.
The Meet the Artist night consisted of four short talks by artists involved in the festival in some way. If I hadn't gone to that, I probably would have skipped the parade and picnic and missed the giant crow puppet and the Fada Dance performance. I also found out more about Swampfest and an intriguing street painting project that is supposed to happen this fall.
On Tuesday, I went to the Screening under the Steeple. The Filmpool has been part of the CVAF since the beginning with screenings of small locally made films. The two films that stood out for me were a rather grim look at postpartum depression and an experimental post apocalyptic film.
On Wednesday, after getting my picture taken with ghosts, I went to the poetry slam and got to be a judge. Being a poetry slam judge is fun in a terrifying sort of way. You have three seconds to give a score out of 10 to a poem you probably don't really understand and then get yelled at by the audience because they wanted you to score it differently, but, as the slam people say, the points are not the point, the poetry is the point and all the yelling is fun.I didn't do a lot of Festival stuff on Thursday, but I did go to see the ghost photographs. I really like how creepy some of them were and was surprised by how different the images looked from the way I imagined they would turn out when I got my picture taken.
On Friday, I spent the evening at St. Mary's where Sylvie Walker, Post Script and The Middle Coast were playing. I hadn't heard Sylvie or Middle Coast before and new music is always exciting. Post Script were incredible as usual and hinted at new music coming soon.
Saturday was the street fair which basically means I end up running into everyone I've ever known all in one day. That actually started early as I ran into Kim and Ian (and Hanna and Ella) at the Farmer's Market and right after that I ran into Suzy (and Sully) and Robyn (and Wren and Lumon and Kit). My day just carried on like that (there's Margaret and William and Gerald) running into all sorts of people (look, Kaeli is busking) and largely failing to look at what people were actually selling (there's Terri) and getting too much sun. (You'd think after all the years of getting a sunburn on festival Saturday I'd remember to wear my sunscreen.) I watched a couple of musicians during the street fair at the new Retallack Street stage (Amy Nelson who I hadn't seen in two years and Kristan Couture who I had only seen as a violinist accompanying Danny Olliver) where I also ran into Redbeard. My brother also came to town late that afternoon so I hung around with him for a while before he went off to the Bryan Adams concert.
In between visiting with people, I also ate a lot of food including a taco and potatoes from the new Malinche food truck, a cannoli, a pork slider, a samosa, lemon ice cream, and two glasses of Horchata. Oh, and of course I had a doughnut for breakfast and I grabbed a milk shake later in the evening.
After my brother went to his concert, I went to the Holy Rosary Park and caught Private Drive and Andino Suns and then headed over to the Artesian for Ava Wild, Gunner and Smith, and Scott Richmond. That was an amazing night of music and not only did Scott play longer than I expected, he also played two encores.
Next up, Mosaic or the Puppet Festival or the Geek Crawl or the Nick Faye concert or a bit of a number of these.
