Mirror images
Cambridge Arts Festival embraces technology
Divya Rakmachandran, left, and her sister Ramya perform the story of Lord Krishna at the Cambridge Arts Festival at Cambridge City Hall, Saturday. The dancers are part of the Sri Abiramy Natyalaya group and perform south Indian classical dance.
CAMBRIDGE — A dull, grey rainy day seemed in direct contrast to all the bright and cheerful offerings at the 22nd annual Cambridge Arts Festival Saturday morning at city hall.
The one-day festival featuring art, music, workshops and children’s programs was the largest yet, in fact 75 per cent larger according to one of the co-ordinators Wendy Campbell.
“We’ve grown in the last three or four years,” she said, citing last year’s crowds of some 5,000 visitors.
What accounts for this increase? Apparently the artists are embracing technology.
“We added a maker lab, combining art and technology,” said Campbell, taking a little break from the action to chat in a pop-up shop on Dickinson Street, across from city hall where all the action took place.
The maker lab and workshops at the festival presented all sorts of intriguing ways to explore creativity, such as building Ozobots, miniature programmable robots. Then there was Tinker Truck, a company that teaches kids — and adults — to use tools and science principals blended with their imaginations to build really cool objects, such as rockets or 3D models.
Esther Niewiadomski runs Mindful Makers, kids camps that operate during all school holidays, year round.
Trained at the Ontario College of Art in the sculpture and installation program, Niewiadomski worked for five years designing theatre props but needed a new outlet after returning home to Kitchener. She had been helping care for her father who had a long standing illness and when he died, Niewiadomski thought, now what?
“You realize, your time is limited,” she said. Then she remembered a friend had been running French immersion camps for kids in Hamilton and that gave her an idea.
Mindful Makers launched in 2016 and she has had to hire three staff members to help run the camps where student/instructor ratios are kept to five-to-one. What she teaches at the camps is partly based on what she learned in art school, but Niewiadomski goes far beyond when looking to inspire her students.
“New things are always coming up,” she said. “And I look to Pinterest for ideas.”
The artist talks about the wide spread “maker community” where technology and art intersect and create something new. For her young charges, she is looking to spark their imagination, teach them about being creative. This summer’s camps have a Harry Potter theme and she’s using the alchemy of science to give the camp experience a wizardly feel.
She also teaches kids to use tools and items around the house such as old buttons, twist ties, cardboard and wine corks. It’s all about reusing and repurposing, she said, nothing goes to waste.
“I’ve been told I’m something of a hoarder,” she joked.
Aside from the technology meets arts vendors at the festival, there were plenty of more traditional visual artists, landscape painters, potters, sketch artists, jewelry makers and a woman name Katie Favell from Hamilton who paints pet portraits.
For prices ranging from $65 to $85, Favell will use a photo of a pet to paint a startling reproduction, with the background kept in abstract. The focus, she said, is on the animal not the backdrop.
There is Miss Priss, the pug who sports a pink ribbon around her neck topped with a huge bow. This is one of the more quirky portraits but there are also many serious depictions of pets.
“I love colour, it makes me happy and I love pets, they make me happy so I thought I’d bring the two of them together,” she said of her work.
A friend sharing her booth runs Ruff Trade Ties: handmade neck ties and bow ties and frilly tutus and bows. There are also unisex bandanas and hats for pets, some small enough to fit a gerbil.
As Campbell said, the appeal of the festival is largely because there is something for everyone, regardless of taste and you never know what delight will be uncovered at the next vendor’s table.