Happy Friday to everyone out there in the Do Art Nation! It’s been an amazing week, as we wrap up 2023 and prepare for a 2024 filled with inspiration and creativity! Our schedule for the first half of next year is already filling up, and we’re continuing to find ways to bring art to more people across the country.
Last weekend we had our first ever DIGITAL ART WORKSHOP! We’ll have more about that in a separate post, as Jerry can tell you all about his experience opening the young minds of Moline IL to the world of digital art. But while he went to Moline, I went down with the rest of his family to the Long Grove Park District for their Wicked Woodlands Halloween Festival.
We drove to Long Grove in the afternoon. Jerry’s stepdad generously took us in his truck, loaded up with tables and chairs as well as workshop equipment. Jerry’s niece and nephew even came along, and I spent the drive in chatting with his 11 year-old niece about Five Nights at Freddy’s, while his 6 year-old nephew played Minecraft. The weather was a little colder than I expected, but I was thrilled to bring our message of art and creativity to families enjoying some fall festivities, as well as participating in the endless creativity and whimsy that Halloween brings out of people every year.
It’s a truly amazing tradition, if you think about it: once a year kids and grown-ups from all walks of life swap out their usual attire and transform themselves through costumes and imagination. Whole cities are festooned in lights–houses are lovingly decorated with cobwebs and skeletons. All this, mostly, is done in a spirit that mixes pure delighted frivolity with a fascination with the mysterious, the frightening, the macabre.
The festival was in the middle of the Reed Turner Woodland, next to the park district center. We set up right next to the stage, with drawing tables for kids and adults to draw us in their unique, “wacky” styles. The event began with a short play by the Long Grove Players–about a coven of witches who were excited for the season, but reluctant to cast evil spells. The audience was encouraged to shout out nice things about the witches, all wearing amazing costumes and appropriately pointy hats. The players joined us for drawing when they were finished–one of the girls drew me as a creature with 12 eyes, dragonfly wings and a witch’s hat, flying in the air.
Kids in costume came by and drew Karen or I. Karen wore a purple monster head as a hat–plush eyes and horns sticking out of her head. Kids and adults alike loved the hat, and added purple and pink to their drawings to depict its vibrant fluffiness. Jerry arrived after the Moline workshop, and introduced us to several kids who were participating at workshops in Long Grove
The evening grew cold, and by the time the festival was over I was glad of the heat in the car. Jerry joined up with us with about an hour left to go, telling us how well the digital art workshop had gone. The actresses in the witch play came back twice more, one drawing a new monster each time with more eyes than the last. Another one of the actresses drew Karen with her hat, and on the hat she wrote BOO ART in the spirit of the season.
