Impressions of the Festival

Art Market: Fabulous setting and great variety of Arts and Crafts. The market had a relaxed and fun atmosphere. How about ethnic food for next year? Great job Marg!

Folk Fest: Perfect location- it felt like a folk festival - good music, lawn chairs, kids and dogs running around. We were towards the back but still could hear well. Missed the last act but heard it was amazing. Way to go Rodney!

ArtWalk: Lots of wonderful Art! Most venues put a lot of effort into their exhibitions and all looked great.

Art in Motion: Participants ranging from 8 to 80 enjoyed the brisk walk and a taste of Lloydminster's excellent art venues. "in motion" reps were well prepared, lead informative warm up exercises and were helpful and friendly. Thank you "in motion"!

The art venues on our tour were excellent! Dawn at Dawn's Interiors give an interesting and comprehensive tour of her local and regional art collection. Leckie and Associates were very welcoming and have an amazing collection of paintings spread throughout 20+ offices. The Legacy Art Club guides were also very welcoming and showed us a variety of art produced by local seniors. Cesar and Wes at Studio Six toured us through their photography studio and photo collection. The Barr Colony tour guide gave us some background info and tour us through the amazing Imhoff collection. We then had the opportunity to view an authentic gallery show of the MWCA's work. The Lloydminster Friendship Centre's exhibition was the most surprising. Their youth workers did a beautiful job of exhibiting their art collection and the staff prepared a lovely tea for our enjoyment.

Dance Legacy: 65 dancers entertained a packed house at the Legacy Centre with a lively multicultural dance performance. The dancers appeared to be having a great time and the audience very appreciative. There were no delays in the performance, Carrie Pollard the MC did a beautiful job, the volunteers were excellent and the desert delicious.

The Malanka dancers, Studio Encore, the Métis dancers and fiddlers, Spearpoint Drum Group and Pow Wow dancers, the Filipino dancers and the Chain and Circle Square Dancers all made a special effort to put on a wonderful show!!

Lloydminster Writes: The late afternoon portion of this event was held in a lovely relaxed setting and showcased some of our local writers. The evening prose and poetry presentations and Ron Ror's excellent play were enjoyed by a large and appreciative audience. Ron's play was brought to life by an amazing cast of local actors. A nice mix of humor and more serious literary selections made the evening a memorable event. All this was topped off by the most amazing pie! Michele Duczek and Cathryn Gantefoer are both natural MC's which made the event even more enjoyable. Well done Cathryn!!

Festival Awards: A nice crowd attended the Awards ceremony in the wonderful Imhoff Theatre. As Lloydminster's public Art Gallery it is an ideal location for these awards. I very much enjoyed the presenters comments about each award winner and the power point presentation of the winners work. Good job Denise and Cathrine.

Quick Draw: As usual an exciting and fun evening!! Congratulation RaeLynn on another successful fund raiser!

Lloydminster Reads: A completely enjoyable event attended by a nice audience of avid readers. The room was charmingly decorated in the novel's theme, the MC interesting and knowledgeable, and the author entertaining and accessible. I particularly enjoyed Lois' reading as there is nothing like hearing a story in the authors voice. Thank you Marilyn and Roni for a great evening.

Writers Workshop: Very good, well attended, workshop covering a wide range of writing information. Lois Simmie is an entertaining speaker with more writing knowledge that she could possibly share with us in 3 hours. Congratulation Cathryn!! And thank you to the Barr Colony staff for helping get Lois to the bus on time.

Terri

Kenny rocked at Ernie's

It's official: Kenny Mac was all heat and soul today at Ernie's Coffee House. It was all about being acoustic with country and rock along with fellow musician and guitarist/drummer Kyle Helmer.
Everything kicked off 7 pm sharp with some of Mac's own songs; intimate, carefully strummed and with a heavy dose of spirit on them. Eventually, it was time for a brief trip back in time with William's Jambalaya (on the Bayou) followed by more original piece s from Mac and friends.
Later, another flashback to check out 1998 with Goo Goo Dolls' "Iris" in a really cool acoustic guitar rendition from Kyle along with a high octave range from Kenny.
A gem from Mac's own repertoire: (I'll be your) Superman, a song that brought back the intimacy and the sharing of personal experience while writing the song. While listening to this material and the rest of it, one may very well realize that the arrangements on his songs are simple, yet powerful in emotions and personal chronicles (applied to any one of us in, almost, any circumstance). All prudently balanced with Kyle's finger picking full of sharpness and feelings.
The hour went like the wind; 8:05 and very soon we figured out we have clapped our way through lots of contry, rock and folk. Nevertheless, Kenny and Kyle made a brief encore that closed the event with a sweet musical taste. No doubt this has been Kenny and Kyle at their finest.

Cesar Juarez

Today at the Festival

Our festival banners are having an impact - my son Sean and I were putting up the festival banners at the BCHCC and an older gentleman came over and
asked when Cat Jahnke would be playing again at our festival. He said Cat blew him away and he wanted to see her again. It made my day.

Congratulations to Terri and Cathryn on successful evenings at Dance Legacy, Lloydminster Writes Outdoors, and Pie, Poetry & A Play. Cindy also has had steady traffic at the Juried Art Show. The walkers involved in Art In Motion are currently out. Don't forget to stop by the Lloydminster Native
Friendship Centre today - this is the Centre's only day on the ArtWalk - the Art In Motion walkers will hit them at 11:20 and you can join them at that
time or stop by anytime this afternoon.

Hope to see you tonight at the Festival Awards and Quick Draw.

Gwen

Music on the Menu - August 2

My husband, granddaughter, Bailey's and their daughter - RaeLynn, Graham and juror too - all enjoyed Cesar's wandering minstrel performance at Spiros. He has a beautiful tenor voice. Although it was not a full house, Spiro and daughter Maria very pleased. Maria told me that Cesar is perfect for them and they would like to feature this type of music on a regular basis.

Brandi Hofer (a Senior Juried Show entrant) was our waitress.

Mike, myself and Paytn continued over to the Singing Waitress for Second Childhood They are an excellent Rock/Western band (great dance music). Their lead singer is quite the entertainer. The owner of Singing Waitress was very disappointed in the turn out, but has plans to have Second Childhood play there in the evenings now and then this winter. Amazing how much fun you can have without a drink.

Dropped off Paytn and my photos to the Juried Show - it does look wonderful!

Terri

First Day of Festival

The set-up today for the Juried Art Show is looking wonderful. So much better than last year with the addition of the OSAC display panels. The space at Holy Rosary High School is amazing. The jurors do their thing tomorrow and then on Monday Cindy and her crew will do a reorganization of the pieces and move the juried out pieces over to Picture That. The show
opens to the public on Tuesday.

I attended the All-Afternoon Jam at the Singing Waitress Café. It was a full house, roughly 15 musicians jamming but Justin Walker, a 16-year old from Marsden blew me away-- very cool afternoon and there was dancing in the middle of the afternoon - it was all very cool. I hope some of you went over to Cesar this evening at Spiros.

Art Market tents went up today and I just drove by and they are still working but it is looking great too.

And I actually had time to drop by one of the ArtWalk venues today.

I attended a session this evening with the Games Mission staff from the different zones and I distributed program guides everyone there was buzzing about the festival

Hope to see everyone at the Art Market and Arts Unleashed tomorrow.

Gwen

Festival 2008 has begun

Hello Everyone!

After months of planning, lots of hard work (not to mention a few mini-nervous breakdowns) the 2nd Annual Arts Without Borders Festival has begun!

This year we are thrilled to be the cultural component of the 2008 Saskatchewan Summer Games. We have a whole week's worth of great events for the arts lover.

Let the games begin!

Michele