Ignite the Arts Festival, buoyed by Art Walk, makes for an amazing Saturday

Opening two Fridays ago, the multi-working day, multi-venue arts extravaganza acknowledged as the Ignite the Arts Competition boldly strode onto the scene to (with any luck ,) demonstrate Penticton could assistance an arts-centric celebration in the early spring.

Imagine about it. How quite a few significant-time Penticton occasions occur outdoors summer time or the Xmas rush? Yep, not lots of.

And this past Saturday was, by significantly, its largest and busiest working day. The action started at 10 am, bounced all over the city, and would not conclude ’til early Sunday early morning — some 15 several hours afterwards.

The logistics alone were being staggering. So we tagged together for a glance.

PentictonNow started out the working day just just before midday at 1 of the Festival’s most frequented venues, Cannery Brewing, getting in a dialogue on “Creating a Compact City’s New music Scene.”

“I appreciate all the factors of the arts,” reported Cannery co-owner Pat Dyck in explaining why her facility experienced hosted so quite a few Ignite occasions.

“I want I was an artist but I can not even draw a stickman,” she claimed with a chortle. “But this is a community variety of hub we have developed right here, and now we get to share in all these great things.”

Up coming we motored down the street to Art Up Studios, just one of 33 non-public areas through Penticton to participate in Saturday’s Lake-to-Lake Artwork Stroll, a solution of the Penticton and District Community Arts Council held as portion of the Competition.

The spot was packed and humming with conversation amongst artists and guests.

Potter Carmen Dillon gave us a brief and surprisingly effective clay-shaping lesson that took all of a minute. We then chatted with a variety of artists and last but not least with Artwork Up proprietor Derrie Selles, who enthusiastically called the hottest Art Walk “fantastic.”

Just a couple blocks away at Okanagan Lake Park, “Sculpture Working day” experienced now started. A essential Pageant part, it would pit households as opposed to people in a sculpture-making contest.

7 familial groups would ultimately contend, but the actual enjoyment at the begin arrived courtesy of wild and crazy 14-piece Vancouver-based mostly dance occasion orchestra Balkan Shmalkan.

They had the smallish but keen opening throng dancing up a storm.

In the meantime at the Desire Café, Kelowna’s Juno-nominated “The Oot ‘n Oots” was occupied proving that “kid’s bands” can attractiveness to grownups as well. We read brilliant grooves when we walked in and continued hearing them all the way ’til we arrived at our future place, Lloyd Gallery across the avenue, the place proprietor Marjo Thompson relayed a brief tale.

“What’s it like to have a day like now?” she queried. “Properly, about a fifty percent hour ago there ended up so a lot of individuals in listed here that I stood up and mentioned, ‘Excuse me everybody, I just want to thank you for coming right here and making us sense everything is back to standard.’ It is just so heartwarming.”

Thompson then hit us with a sentiment that grew to become commonplace — that Ignite the Arts could not happen at a much better time of year.

“It is really a excellent time,” she explained. “It ignites the season and starts the motion. It commences things going on.”

Our tour continued at Slackwater Brewing, where boss Liam Peyton echoed Thompson’s ideas.

“I think the massive matter listed here is reuniting the neighborhood just after a few of bodily and socially divisive yrs,” he explained. “Provide them back again with audio and artwork. It can be the perfect time to split into spring.”

We then walked into the Slackwater parking lot, exactly where we encountered musical duo “Cajun House Pressure” participating in out the back doorway of a shipping truck.

Wonderful.

Renee Matheson of the adjacent Matheson & Grove Great Art Gallery and Janine Walker at the new (Feb. 1st) Canadian Handmade were being both of those fortunately working with tons of foot website traffic, even though Jenny Lengthy at The Very long Gallery + Studios claimed the metropolis felt “alive.”

“By the pandemic, we were being all waiting around for this minute,” she said. “It truly is spring and almost everything is alive and increasing yet again.”

But the vibes extended outside of downtown. Around at the Cannery Trade Centre, regional artist/potter Carla O’Bee welcomed people to her spaciously funky (funkily roomy?) new studio on the leading floor. It is really termed Speckled Row and it was jammed with spectators viewing O’Bee do her thing at the wheel.

Coming from Lake State to Speckled Row and the Artwork Wander was Karina Nardi, who brought her spouse and children together with her and joked that she acquired to touch base with pals whilst here…and acquire beer downstairs at Tin Whistle Brewing.

“So it is really all worked out really well,” she laughed.

Tin Whistle was likely powerful much too, no doubt owing in part to the existence of painter Ariana’ Kamps, who purchased alongside several of her will work and chatted with patrons.

“Remaining below, it can be a terrific match,” stated Kamps. “The colors on their cans and all the things. I think their get the job done is character- and female-centric, and so is my art.”

Back at Sculpture Working day at Okanagan Lake Park, the household sculpture-developing opposition experienced finished and the judging was established to start out.

Earlier, the leading 3 “People’s Preference” vote-getters in the 2021 Penticton General public Sculpture Show (the professional-degree sculptures residing together the Okanagan Lake waterfront for the past calendar year) were revealed.

Taking the top spot was Denis Kleine’s Northern Hunter (the polar bear), followed by David Ducharme’s Quantum Entanglement (the devilish beast-male) and Joann Helm’s Joy of Lifestyle Unbalanced (the bronze dachshund).

Then it was back again to the spouse and children sculpture judging. But a amusing matter took place on the way to a determination. They couldn’t select a single winner.

So as a substitute they chose two: “I have Viewed Better Times” from “Group Upcycled,” and “Earth Transitions” from Jordan Lauzon and grandmom Sharleen Lauzon.

The former, stated Workforce Upcycled spokesperson and observed area artist Ron Gladdish, who was there with 3 generations of family, was a “kind of anthology of all the distinctive automobiles and helps make and versions and the direction we are likely.”

Of co-winner “Earth Transitions,” younger sculptor Jordan Lauzon claimed, “This was both of our notion, that the earth has to be remodeled into love. We all have to operate with each other for the globe to be a superior put.”

That environmental topic was dominant at the opposition, where by a crew from Lake Region went large with climate adjust in an icy concoction purposely manufactured to soften into oblivion, and a large team of folks less than the “Team Harmony” umbrella assembled a pair of furthermore-measurement functions that showed, stated spokesperson and observed local sculptor Pat Area, “that we need to be in harmony with every single other and with character in order to survive.”

Afterwards Saturday night, PentictonNow sought out a small additional action and located ourselves watching (and once once again extensively having fun with) Balkan Shmalkan, this time as they rocked the home down at Slackwater Brewing.

The band was 1 of six acts on the Festival-motivated Slackwater Saturday night menu.

From there it was on to Tempest Theatre for our personal finale of a really very long day, a burst of improv comedy courtesy of customers of the Peach Gravy Theatre Co-op.

It was, in a phrase, superb. We went in unfamiliar with the troupe and arrived out massive enthusiasts, paying out significantly of our time wiping tears of laughter from our eyes.

And that’s when we recognized that a person of the large objectives of any festival is to tune its attendees into neat but unfamiliar things.

Aim reached.

In the long run, it wasn’t tough to be amazed with the initially-ever Ignite the Arts Competition. A mere strategy just a number of months in the past, it came collectively when the specter of COVID and COVID rules continue to loomed. It was scheduled for a time — early spring — when Penticton is not accustomed to major events. And of course it faced the pressure of remaining a first-time affair.

Still, from start off to end it correctly connected folks with new creative ordeals and with other persons. Indeed, particularly on the ultimate weekend when gatherings have been diverse and abundant and Festival folk ended up crawling all about downtown, you could experience the atmosphere co-organizer Paul Crawford wished to produce.

There were being troubles. Sculpture Day, for occasion, could have utilized a meals truck or two, a couple of refreshments, additional music right after Balkan Shmalkan took flight early in the afternoon, or some other attraction to far better retain the fascination of a dwindling crowd.

But things like that can be corrected. What is actually tougher is having regular individuals — not just artists and their associates — to show up at an early spring arts-concentrated taking place. Occasionally Ignite did just that, sometimes it did not.

But unquestionably that undertaking will grow to be much easier in a yr two. And Crawford confirmed Sunday that a 2nd go-’round, and a 3rd a fourth for that make a difference, is surely in the cards.

And that will make us happy. Penticton, significantly in the limbo of early spring, requirements what Ignite the Arts can develop into.