Art Attack – Way too much
John Rankine
11/8/2012
It was really hard to keep up with everything going on in town the last 10 days or so.
It started with a sold-out Mad Hatter Ball, followed by scores of kids Halloween night on White St. and a line-up at Chelsea’s for local favorites, The Fossils of Ancient Robots.
The Zombie Invasion kicked off November with a Zombie dance, a Zombie Variety show, and ended with a Zombie parade and Zombie art exhibit.
Meanwhile, Diversity Weekend battled it out with the annual Folk Festival, with disco balls and drag shows competing with the Barefoot Ball and craft shows.
I am not a Zombie fanatic, but the parade down Spring St. was freakishly wonderful, and I was impressed on how a few hundred local and visiting Zombies kept in character.
Less than 24 hours later, the always-sweet Folk Festival parade looked even more saccharine after the night before Zombie gore fest. Puppet master George Meyer’s giant folk-guitar playing puppet (a nod to Woody Guthrie) and Sparky’s toxic orange balloon ensemble were parade highlights.
And hats off to those who participated in both parades, changing from Zombie to overalls overnight.
The Zombie Art exhibit at The Space felt surreal at times as the room filled with some pretty gory creatures viewing some pretty gory art.
Event organizer and artist Jeremy Mason McGraw’s Zombie photo booth, which automatically snapped a photograph every 30 seconds of anyone sitting or walking by a dilapidated overstuffed couch was an art installation unto itself. The results can be found at jeremymasonmcgraw.com
Add to it Saturday’s Doggie Style Fashion show fundraiser, a drumming in Basin Park and a couple of friends’ milestone birthday celebrations at Caribé, and I was, frankly, done.
Not sure whose idea it was to schedule Folk Festival at the same time as Halloween and Diversity Weekend, but it was dumb. To book a great band (The Carper Family) for the Barefoot Ball and then to hold the event Halloween night was even dumber.
And I’m not sure of the AUD numbers, but with everything going on, they could not have been great, and I regret missing the screening of John Boorman’s classic film, Deliverance, which was shown at the Library Annex with actor/co-star Ronny Cox speaking about the film while hocking his new book. I’d be curious if the famous “squeal like a pig” scene still made audiences squirm in their seats like they did 40 years ago.
There was simply too much going on, and I hope the powers that be pay attention and see what Zombies, a zero budget, some creative people, YouTube, Facebook and a couple of blogs can do to create and promote a successful first-time event.
One more thing, “Yay Obama,” and if anyone is counting, I used “Zombie” 12, make that 13, times.
Leave a Reply