Feelin' Artsy

Last weekend was the Utah Arts Festival. I attend this event every couple of years or so, usually if I have friends who are going and want company. This year, though, I attended as a volunteer for The Leonardo.

The Leonardo is going to be an arts, culture, and science center in the heart of Salt Lake City. For those who may have been to the Pacific Science Center in Seattle or San Francisco's Exploratorium, it will be something like that but with a greater emphasis on the arts. The Leonardo is actually composed of three different organizations: the Center for Documentary Arts, Global Artways (a local arts education program), and the Utah Science Center.

The Leonardo was pretty much born in the November 2003 election. Salt Lake voters approved a $10 million bond to renovate the old main city library and create an interactive learning center for the arts and sciences. The bond will not be released, however, until private matching funds are raised. The organization is about 80% of the way to accomplishing that. So, if any of you educationally-minded readers just happen to have an extra $2 million sitting around....

Anyway, I got to the Library Square (where the Arts Festival is held each year) at around 11:30 on Thursday morning. My shift was from noon to four, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to get there early. Nor was I mistaken. Whitney, the new volunteer coordinator, had me putting stuff together for the booth right away. We had everything in place when people started wandering in around 12:15.

I shared the shift with two other volunteers. One of them was a girl who's getting her Masters degree in meteorology at the U. The other was a friend of hers from her undergrad days in Illinois; he now lives in New Orleans, but happened to be visiting. Nice people, both of them. They were leaving the next day for Yellowstone, which made me wish I could go up there for a weekend. Or on a cruise to Alaska, where Mom and Dad, Mikayla, Granny, Aunt Anne, and Uncle Daryl have been for the past week or so. But I digress.

We watched the booth for about four hours, with our biggest challenges being shifting winds and long stretches of time with nobody in particular to talk to. We spoke to about four truly interested people per hour, I guess. It wasn't entirely unexpected, being the opening of the first day of the Festival (and the middle of a weekday to boot). We got maybe ten people signed up on the e-mail update list for future events, and four people signed up as potential volunteers. And I learned a lot about what's coming, which is cool.

Our booth was located close enough to one of the stages that we could hear some of the musical acts performing. Linh (the guy visiting from N'awlins) and I took a couple of minutes to listen to one of the bands, a local group named Crenshaw. They described their music as 'alterna-funk'. They have a very catchy sound, and the trumpet player and bass player (an instrument for which I have a particular appreciation) can both really groove. I should be getting the CD from Amazon any day now. After my shift, I also got to listen to a group called Salty Frogs. They described themselves as 'high-energy Celtic rock-n-roll fusion'. That was a pretty good description, I think; we were also collectively reminded of Blues Traveler. Unfortunately, I can find neither a web site nor a CD for them.

Around 4:30, it was showing signs that it was about to rain. And by 4:35, it was raining hard enough to make me forget I was living in the middle of the barren desert. The festival went into rain-delay mode, with booth operators closing their flaps and moving their less waterproof wares undercover. As for me, I had grabbed a plate of rice, beans, and tortillas from the Red Iguana booth and made my way into the dining pavilion before the rain got bad. The skies cleared up after about twenty minutes, though, and by 5:00 it was back to the regularly scheduled festivities.

I took the opportunity to wander around and look at the various exhibits. There was some really impressive stuff there. Pottery, paintings, crafts, jewelry, all kinds of things. I particularly liked one booth that was selling ceramic tiles with quotes or sayings carved into them, my favorite of which read: "I'd tell you to go to Hell, but I work there, and I wouldn't want to have to see you every day." I'm going to have to remember to bring some cash with me to this thing one of these years.

Not all of the offerings were impressive, though. There was a lot that was uninspired, overdone, or just plain gaudy. Monstrous sculptures of rusty welded metal, 'found' art, chairs made from disused skis, and battery-powered knickknacks that looked like leftovers from my mom's woodworking days were among some of the more unpleasant offerings. I'm no art critic, but I something hideous when I see it. And yes, I realize that the 'artists' make a living selling this stuff—but I can't imagine it's a very good living. Jon, if you're reading this, you really need to get down here and set up a booth next year. Your work is orders of magnitude better than a lot of this schlock.

I took off at about 6:30, but not until after I had seen a performance of Project Bandaloop, a performing troupe that combines dance with aerobatics. In short, they rappelled off the roof of the new library and used the four-story glass wall as a stage. Once I got used to the 90º shift in perspective, it was quite impressive. It was like modern dance in low gravity. It was definitely worth sticking around for.

So, that's what I was doing last Thursday. If I'm still around next summer, I'll probably do it again.