Saturday, July 18, 2009

ARTSCAPE!!!!!!


ARTSCAPE was awesome, as always. I mean how lucky are we as this is the country’s largest FREE outdoor art festival…and it is right in our backyard! (Well, if by backyard, you mean an hour after driving on the expressway.)

So much to see AND do at this event…the Art Cars in front of Penn Station are always a hoot, the Performance Artists along the Charles Street Bridge offer lots of self-involved, participatory, hands-on activities, and a vast array of Artists’ Booths in all mediums/categories/styles spanning for numerous city blocks…. you name it, ARTSCAPE’s got it! Several big-name Concerts, Fashion Shows and Films – all FREE!


The fact that they are also doing their best to make this event environmentally conscious & friendly with an entire ‘GREEN GARAGE’ and SUSTAINABLE/ORGANIC FOOD COURT with plenty of recycling cans scattered about makes it even better - compared to a lot of free public events I’ve been to.




(If you want a smoothie around here, you better start pedaling!)

My favorite vendors in the Green Garage would have to be Baltimore Free Store (http://www.baltimorefreestore.org/ ) where you can “take what you want & leave what you can” at one of their 60 markets around town. Their way of keeping things out of landfills is for you to donate your used clothes & household items to them. Then they literally give everything away for FREE! Genius! Another would be the Portable Gardens…(http://www.portablegardens.com/) basically a salad in a shopping cart. Also The Loading Dock (http://www.loadingdock.org/ ), a very green business whose motto is ‘Don’t Dump. DONATE!’ for all construction, remodeling and building materials. Very cool as we are connected to this area of business and plan to use this company in the future.






Gotta love Martha Rotten’s (http://www.martharotten.com/ )‘not made in China’ lead-free pewter goth-themed jewelry (yes, they are REAL bones, chicken I was told?) And Steven Malone’s Poetic Earth Designs (http://www.poeticearth.com/ ) leather bags and tree-free sketch books & journals. Clever Cat Bags (clevercatbags.com ) recycled coffee bag bags…fashionable irony - this is a real trend now (I have had mine now almost a year) and my daughter couldn't resist one of their 'organic coffee' messenger bags for about $40. Also Dan Lachman and his Sharp Shirter (shapshirter.com ) business w/tees and self-sticking laptop, ipod & phone covers…really cool for this self-proclaimed round-the-clock-video-playing-college-slacker.




But my personal ‘Best In Show’ award for the weekend would have to go to James 'Jimbo' Pollock (http://www.jimbopollocksart.com/ ) Hampden’s own ‘Hubcap Christmas Tree’ guy and his recycled mechanical parts sculptures. Makes me want to gather a bunch of junk from my husband’s shop and start welding…totally awesome!



Year after year I continue to be amazed, impressed, fascinated and inspired after a trip to ARTSCAPE… 2009 certainly was no different.

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