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Opening two Fridays ago, the multi-day, multi-venue arts extravaganza known as the Ignite the Arts Festival boldly strode onto the scene to (hopefully) prove Penticton could support an arts-centric celebration in the early spring.
Think about it. How many big-time Penticton events happen outside summer or the Christmas rush? Yep, not many.
And this past Saturday was, by far, its biggest and busiest day. The action began at 10 am, bounced all over the city, and wouldn’t end 'til early Sunday morning -- some 15 hours later.
The logistics alone were staggering. So we tagged along for a look.
PentictonNow started the day just before noon at one of the Festival's most frequented venues, Cannery Brewing, taking in a discussion on "Building a Small City's Music Scene."
"I love all the aspects of the arts," said Cannery co-owner Pat Dyck in explaining why her facility had hosted so many Ignite events.
"I wish I was an artist but I can't even draw a stickman," she said with a laugh. "But this is a community kind of hub we've created here, and now we get to share in all these wonderful things."
Next we motored down the street to Art Up Studios, one of 33 private spaces throughout Penticton to participate in Saturday's Lake-to-Lake Art Walk, a product of the Penticton and District Community Arts Council held as part of the Festival.
The place was packed and humming with conversation between artists and guests.
Potter Carmen Dillon gave us a quick and surprisingly effective clay-shaping lesson that took all of a minute. We then chatted with various artists and finally with Art Up owner Derrie Selles, who enthusiastically called the latest Art Walk "fantastic."
Just a couple blocks away at Okanagan Lake Park, "Sculpture Day" had now begun. A key Festival component, it would pit families versus families in a sculpture-building contest.
Seven familial groups would ultimately compete, but the real entertainment at the start came courtesy of wild and crazy 14-piece Vancouver-based dance party orchestra Balkan Shmalkan.
They had the smallish but eager opening throng dancing up a storm.
Meanwhile at the Dream Café, Kelowna's Juno-nominated "The Oot 'n Oots" was busy proving that "kid's bands" can appeal to adults too. We heard awesome grooves when we walked in and continued hearing them all the way 'til we arrived at our next destination, Lloyd Gallery across the street, where owner Marjo Thompson relayed a quick tale.
"What's it like to have a day like today?" she queried. "Well, about a half hour ago there were so many people in here that I stood up and said, 'Excuse me everybody, I just want to thank you for coming here and making us feel everything is back to normal.' It's just so heartwarming."
Thompson then hit us with a sentiment that became commonplace -- that Ignite the Arts couldn't happen at a better time of year.
"It's a perfect time," she said. "It ignites the season and starts the action. It starts things happening."
Our tour continued at Slackwater Brewing, where boss Liam Peyton echoed Thompson's thoughts.
"I think the big thing here is reuniting the community after a couple of physically and socially divisive years," he said. "Bring them back with music and art. It's the perfect time to break into spring."
We then walked into the Slackwater parking lot, where we encountered musical duo "Cajun Space Force" playing out the back door of a delivery truck.
Awesome.
Renee Matheson of the adjacent Matheson & Grove Fine Art Gallery and Janine Walker at the new (Feb. 1st) Canadian Handmade were both happily dealing with tons of foot traffic, while Jenny Long at The Long Gallery + Studios claimed the city felt "alive."
"Through the pandemic, we were all waiting for this moment," she said. "It's spring and everything is alive and growing again."
But the vibes extended beyond downtown. Over at the Cannery Trade Centre, local artist/potter Carla O'Bee welcomed folk to her spaciously funky (funkily spacious?) new studio on the top floor. It's called Speckled Row and it was jammed with spectators watching O'Bee do her thing at the wheel.
Coming from Lake Country to Speckled Row and the Art Walk was Karina Nardi, who brought her family along with her and joked that she got to touch base with friends while here…and buy beer downstairs at Tin Whistle Brewing.
"So it's all worked out really well," she laughed.
Tin Whistle was going strong too, no doubt due in part to the presence of painter Ariana' Kamps, who bought along several of her works and chatted with patrons.
"Being here, it's a great match," said Kamps. "The colours on their cans and everything. I think their work is nature- and female-centric, and so is my art."
Back at Sculpture Day at Okanagan Lake Park, the family sculpture-building competition had ended and the judging was set to begin.
Earlier, the top three "People's Choice" vote-getters in the 2021 Penticton Public Sculpture Exhibit (the pro-level sculptures residing along the Okanagan Lake waterfront for the past 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-man) and Joann Helm's Joy of Life Unbalanced (the bronze dachshund).
Then it was back to the family sculpture judging. But a funny thing happened on the way to a decision. They couldn't pick a single winner.
So instead they chose two: "I've Seen Better Days" from "Team Upcycled," and "Earth Transitions" from Jordan Lauzon and grandmom Sharleen Lauzon.
The former, said Team Upcycled spokesperson and noted local artist Ron Gladdish, who was there with three generations of family, was a "kind of anthology of all the different cars and makes and models and the direction we're going."
Of co-winner "Earth Transitions," young sculptor Jordan Lauzon said, "This was both of our idea, that the earth has to be transformed into love. We all have to work together for the world to be a better place."
That environmental theme was dominant at the competition, where a team from Lake Country went big with climate change in an icy concoction purposely made to melt into oblivion, and a big group of folks under the "Team Harmony" umbrella assembled a couple of plus-size works that showed, said spokesperson and noted local sculptor Pat Field, "that we need to be in harmony with each other and with nature in order to survive."
Later Saturday evening, PentictonNow sought out a little more action and found ourselves watching (and once again thoroughly enjoying) Balkan Shmalkan, this time as they rocked the house down at Slackwater Brewing.
The band was one of six acts on the Festival-inspired Slackwater Saturday night menu.
From there it was on to Tempest Theatre for our personal finale of a very long day, a burst of improv comedy courtesy of members of the Peach Gravy Theatre Co-op.
It was, in a word, superb. We went in unfamiliar with the troupe and came out big fans, spending much of our time wiping tears of laughter from our eyes.
And that's when we realized that one of the big goals of any festival is to tune its attendees into cool but unfamiliar stuff.
Goal achieved.
Ultimately, it wasn't hard to be impressed with the first-ever Ignite the Arts Festival. A mere concept just a few months ago, it came together while the specter of COVID and COVID regulations still loomed. It was scheduled for a time -- early spring -- when Penticton isn’t accustomed to big events. And of course it faced the pressure of being a first-time affair.
Still, from start to finish it successfully connected people with new artistic experiences and with other people. Indeed, especially on the final weekend when events were varied and plentiful and Festival folk were crawling all over downtown, you could feel the ambience co-organizer Paul Crawford wanted to create.
There were issues. Sculpture Day, for instance, could have used a food truck or two, a few refreshments, extra music after Balkan Shmalkan took flight early in the afternoon, or some other attraction to better keep the interest of a dwindling crowd.
But stuff like that can be corrected. What's tougher is getting regular folks -- not just artists and their associates -- to attend an early spring arts-focused happening. Sometimes Ignite did just that, sometimes it didn’t.
But certainly that task will become easier in a year two. And Crawford confirmed Sunday that a second go-'round, and a third a fourth for that matter, is definitely in the cards.
And that makes us happy. Penticton, particularly in the limbo of early spring, needs what Ignite the Arts can become.
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