Art festival returns to Wolseley

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/05/2022 (1470 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WOLSELEY

Get ready for a banjo-picking, canvas-painting, art-showcasing good time. Wolseley’s Envision Festival of the Arts is back after four postponements.

“The last one we had was in 2019; 2020 was in the works and we had started lining up people then COVID hit,” said festival founder and organizer Jim Palmquist.

Palmquist kept trying to solidify dates, but in an all-too-familiar manner, the virus put up hurdle after hurdle for the social event.

But with the city resuming a semblance of social life, Palmquist finally managed to pin down the details of the festival.

It will be a two-day affair running on Fri., May 6 from 7 to 10 p.m. and Sat., May 7 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at R. A. Steen Community Centre (980 Palmerston Ave.) in Wolseley.

The festival will exhibit works from 14 performers; 22 visual artists; four poets; and a slew of students from Wolseley, Laura Secord, Mulvey elementary schools and Gordon Bell High School. The work of visual artists and students will be on display around the community centre for people to enjoy, as musicians and other performers put on live shows.

“(Performing artists) each get 20 minutes on the stage,” Palmquist said. “That allows us, during the hours of the festival, to have nonstop music. The writers and authors and poets have mostly had static displays of books they’ve written, but sometimes we have a number of people come forward to read excerpts from their books or poems.”

Much of the artwork will be up for sale, Palmquist said.

Kicking off this year’s musicians will be Tim Osmond, a banjo and guitar player that specializes in bluegrass country and folk.

“It’s a real great community event,” said Osmond, who has been involved in the festival in past years. “It’s really casual and relaxed, and you feel comfortable there.”

Osmond, a resident of Evanson Street, said festivals like this one help create a “sense of cohesion” in the community.

“You run into people in the neighbourhood that you might see around casually, and you get to know them in more of an open common area and environment,” he said. “And you also get to see what people in the neighbourhood do for their art.”

Garfield Street resident Kathleen Black’s artwork, for example, takes several forms. She draws, paints, and “everything in between,” she said.

Lately, that’s meant glasswork, ranging from stained glass to glass sculpture. At the festival, she’ll be exhibiting a medley of styles upon the beautiful papers of “old edition northern maps,” adorned with paints and glasswork and whatever else her artistic compass discovered.

Black said she’s excited to get back to the festival, which after two years of on-and-off isolation, is likely needed now more than ever.

“It’s a nice way to see neighbours, and we haven’t seen much of anybody in the last two years,” she said. “I suspect people have been going crazy making stuff in isolation.”

Both Black and Osmond commended Palmquist for his dedication to the festival, saying it simply wouldn’t exist without him.