CREATE! Arts Festival gives people a chance to get hands-on with artists in East Van
Eastside Arts Society’s new fest aims to make meaningful connections between the public and local artmakers
Eastside Arts Society’s Studio 101. Photo by Jodie Ponto
CREATE! Arts Festival happens August 21 and 22 from 10 am to 6 pm PDT at Woodland Park, Terminal City Glass Co-op, the Mergatroid Building, and Georgina Lohan Studio.
FOR PROOF THAT filling out surveys and feedback forms is sometimes worth your while, consider an upcoming event that has grown out of the beloved annual Culture Crawl Visual Arts, Design and Craft Festival (better known as the Eastside Culture Crawl).
Happening for the first time this weekend, CREATE! Arts Festival features dozens of art-making workshops as well as a public-participation art installation, with everything taking place in East Vancouver.
“Over the years of doing the Crawl, we kept hearing from different people attending that they wanted to get their hands into something—that they wanted to create,” says Esther Rausenberg, executive and artistic director of Eastside Arts Society, which produces Culture Crawl and the new CREATE! and is embarking on the creation of the Eastside Arts District. “Through the Crawl, there are lots of people who have learned a lot about the arts and about artists’ practices and who have followed certain artists along the way and collected works, but people want more even more—especially so now given the pandemic, after being Zoomed out and probably on Facebook more than they ever wanted to be.
“There are very few opportunities for young adults and school-age kids to access the arts,” she adds. “Maybe they remember really liking painting or they once worked with clay and really liked it; this gives people a taste so they can see if it’s something they want to pursue further.”
In addition to the aforementioned genres, printmaking, glass blowing, ceramics, jewellery, drawing, and other forms will all be on offer via accessible workshops for adults and kids led by local artists. (The festival coincides with the EAS Art, Bike, and Beer Crawl Fundraiser.)
Photo by Wendy D
Grace Lee (eikcam ceramics), Christine Moulson, Mat Holmstrom, Beata Kacy, Denise Wilson (Bronsino Leather), Krista Johnson, Haisla Collins, Naomi Yamamoto, Chantal Cardinal, Lori Goldberg, and Amberlie Perkin are among the participating artists in the August 21 workshops taking place at Woodland Park.
The next day, creative workshops will be hosted at several Eastside studios, including at Terminal City Glass Co-op with Bruce Inglis, Edge City Woodworking at the Mergatroid Building, and Georgina Lohan Studio.
Also on August 21 is a free community art installation facilitated by artist Amy Walker. The event (which will have a limited, rotating capacity due to pandemic protocols) will give people the opportunity to make a piece of art based on their vision for the local community; over the course of the day, each creation will be added to the installation.
“Amy is basing the installation on the theme of ‘How do we give back?” Rausenberg says. “How do we help society strengthen and get better in a more holistic way?
“I’m really looking forward to how that evolves,” she says of the public project. “It’s amazing what people come up with. People will be free to weave in and out to see what other people are making. It’s about getting people excited about creating art and becoming more knowledgeable about what goes into a piece of art or craft.”
Establishing meaningful connections to the arts is at the very heart of CREATE! and also of the Eastside Arts Society as a whole, Rausenberg says.
“The more ways we engage people with the arts in a hands-on way, the greater the appreciation, the greater the connectivity, the greater the understanding of what goes into it,” she says. “I would love to get past the ‘my two-year-old can do that’ comment…. This [festival] gives people a way to understand the depths the artists are coming from in terms of their art practice. You can visualize what you might want to do but that’s only one aspect of it; there’s the whole technical aspect to every artform, whether it’s mixing paint or inks or understanding the technical work behind glazes and firing.
“Each workshop is designed so you can get a taste of it,” Rausenberg says. “What we really want is to have profound connections between the public and the artists.”
For more information, see [Eastside Arts Society].1
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