Festival opens Saturday

By Hope Wallace

The transformation is beginning. In the next couple days the Wassenberg Art Center and Main Street Van Wert will take a bland lot and turn it into a festival space. Next, we’ll have that festival. Museums and art centers across the country have learned quickly the days of quiet, hushed galleries are becoming a thing of the past. They still exist and we are glad, however the combination of activity and art is now mainstream. Gone are the days of don’t touch, don’t enjoy. This Saturday, we want to you touch, experience and enjoy our latest art extravaganza. Beginning at 2 p.m. and lasting until 11 p.m. we will rock the block with five international Fort Wayne artists, multiple forms of music, street performers and we’ll celebrate the art of food with five, Fort Wayne gourmet food trucks. There will be art activities for youth during the day, games, a beer garden filling the space behind the art center; thanks to our forward thinking county commissioners. To round out the day we are launching the first ever Town Creek Duck Derpy! Someone will win $1000, $400 or $100 and other donated prizes. Major advertisers for this event are VanCrest Health Care and Greve Chrysler. Thank you! We hope to see everyone out and about this Saturday, buy a duck, some food, some art, dance and rejoice. Oh, yeah. Zero entry fee.

The One-eyed Show will take the stage later in the evening and fill the back festival area with diverse musical influences that range from the Allman Brothers Band and the Black Crowes, to the Eagles and Johnny Cash, The One-Eyed Show’s sound spans many genres. Within a single performance, TOES often runs the gamut of rock, bluegrass, funk and the blues — all the while maintaining an improvisational styling. TOES has performed the Midwest from Chicago to Athens and many festivals and venues in between.

Sign up soon, spaces are going quickly! Summer Camp II! Our July summer camp will be scheduled this year from July 21–23 for ages 6–15. We will be exploring perspective with chalk and photography, Native American art through by examining our Faces of Little Bighorn Collection and making artifacts. We’re even going to make clouds. We’ll be making illustrations with melted crayons and study children’s author and illustrator, Shel Silverstein. Ages 6-10: 10–noon, ages 11–15: 1–3 p.m. Costs are $30 for art center members, $35 regular. Needs-based scholarships can be made available if a young person wishes to participate in our camp. Please contact the director.

We are happy to announce we’ll be hosting a watercolor workshop by published watercolorist, Allen Hutton, Toledo, September 8–10 from 10 a.m.– 4 p.m. Allen graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art with A BFA in Industrial Design. He is a regularly accepted artist in the Ohio Watercolor Society Exhibits, and has shown his work in group and solo shows across the country since 2002. He continues to be awarded in most of the exhibits he enters and will provide instruction on his unique style. Hutton strives to render the fleeting patterns of light and shadow with the simple purpose of preserving the reality of a landscape or still life in a particular moment in time and season. Costs will be $100 per day with a two-day minimum sign-up. Materials list will be provided. Please give us a call soon for this unique opportunity to paint the world in a different light.

For more information on exhibits or to sign for classes and events visit wassenbergartcenter.org. The Wassenberg Art Center is located at 214 South Washington Street (former Van Wert Armory). We can also be reached by telephone at: 419.238.6837, email: info@wassenbergartcenter.org and our website is: wassenbergartcenter.org.