Community festival season set to open

By Matt Nagle

Fife Free Press
mattnagle@tacomaweekly.com
Published on: May 22, 2008

Now that summertime is just around the corner, it is time to make plans for getting out of the house and outside into the warm sunshine. It is festival season in the South Sound, and over the next several months there will be all kinds of outdoor events to suit any taste. For those who enjoy community arts-focused outings of the grassroots type, here is a short preview of three street festivals coming up this summer that you will not want to miss.

Urban Arts Festival – June 29

Now in its fourth year, the Urban Arts Festival is a free, all-ages event that showcases artists and musicians of all kinds, particularly those who do not often show their work to the public or are doing so for the first time. Booth rates are kept reasonable so emerging and underground artists can afford to participate.

Held in Fireman’s Park at 803 ‘A’ St. from 12 p.m. to dusk, this year the festival has some new things in store including a sushi booth courtesy of Jazzbones. “Anybody who’s had sushi at Jazzbones knows it’s delicious,” said event booking manager and co-coordinator Matthew Eklund, one of the six-member organizing committee that includes his wife, Laura Eklund, Linda Honeck, Johanna Gardner, Lisa Fruishanti and Mandi Webster-Martin.

The organizers have also invited Seattle-based arts group Artifakt to celebrate urban culture and graffiti art at the festival.

Music will be a highlight of the day. “We have a whole slew of DJs this year on two stages,” Eklund said, a house stage and a drum and bass stage. There will be two additional music stages offering other types of music performances: the funk/groove jam band Flowmotion, the roots rock of Joshua Cain Band, Sister Monk’s world groove and alternative power-pop group Don’t Tell Sophie, among others.

An Urban Art Festival pre-function party fundraiser will be held at Jazzbones on June 6. It is all-ages until 11 p.m., and all proceeds collected from the $8 suggested donation will be used to help with staging and sound expenses for this year. The line-up will include Little Big Man (reggae), Joshua Cain Band (roots rock), Bumma Stoge (experimental/pop punk), One Way Trip (funk/groove), and Fear Train Caravan (acoustic Americana/folk rock).

For more information on Urban Art Festival, visit www.urbanartfestival.net.

McKinley Art and Street  Festival – August 16

The theme for this year’s McKinley Art and Street Festival is “The Heart of the Hill.” This theme reflects not only where the event is held, McKinley Hill on Tacoma’s East Side, but also the spirit in which the nine-member organizing committee plans the all-day event which includes music, arts and crafts vendors, food and other street festival attractions.

Norma Owens is president of the McKinley Hill Business District and program manager for the festival. She said the event provides the perfect opportunity to introduce the McKinley Hill area to those who may not be familiar with it. “We want to get people over here so they can see what a neat neighborhood this is,” she said. “It is changing a lot, slowly, but we have new businesses coming in and it’s a great place to own a home. I love living in this area.”

The festival takes place 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. in a cordoned-off section between Division and East 34th Street, in the heart of the McKinley Hill Business District.

Owens said that this year the focus will be on music and dance. She mentioned that the festival happens to be on the same day as Madonna’s birthday, and Owens dropped a hint about some surprises that may be in store for festival-goers. “I’ve heard tell there might be someone doing a tribute to

Madonna that day. It’s just a rumor; I don’t know if it’s true or not,” she said. “There may even be a Madonna look-alike contest.”   

In collaboration with Tacoma Christian Center, an anchor on McKinley Hill, the festival is co-sponsoring a school supply giveaway for children. “Last year we served more than 700 kids,” Owens said. “This year we hope that number reaches 1,000.”

Returning this year will be the Pet Parade that is such a crowd favorite and a highlight of the festival, with pets all dolled up in costumes for the occasion.  

“This is a positive event for an area that hasn’t always had really great press,” Owens said. “We want people to see we’re just regular people over here and that we come from all walks of life.”

Many volunteers are needed for the day of the festival to help with everything from setting up to taking refreshments to vendors to

directing traffic. For more information on this or other matters, email festival@mckinleyhillbusinessdistrict.com or visit www.myspace.com/topoftacoma.

Glass Roots Arts Festival – August 24

The first Glass Roots Arts Festival was held in 2006, an outgrowth of a community meeting among several hundred artists at the Temple Theatre the year before where numerous issues were explored including what more could be done to help local artists connect with each other and the broader community. The idea for a free, outdoor summertime arts festival was born. The name Glass Roots Arts Festival came from an early working relationship with

Museum of Glass (MOG) and the desire among the artists to organize the festival at the grassroots level and keep it that way.

The events committee for Tacoma Arts Community, a grass roots arts group, presents the Glass Roots Arts Festival to showcase regional arts, artists and artisans. Key to the festival’s principles is to charge the artists nothing to participate, mainly to attract artists, including youth, whose name may not be as familiar as others. “We want to make sure that what you’re seeing is a good representation of what’s out there in the community,” said Houston Wimberly, events coordinator for the festival. “We decided we aren’t going to charge for vendor space because we want the arts community to really feel connected, to be able to demonstrate their works and to sell them.”

Last year the festival featured about a dozen music acts playing while street theater actors, graphic artists and graffiti artists all did their thing live for spectators to watch. “This year we want to build on that energy level,” Wimberly said. “We’re really trying to build on a deeper level of connecting to the arts community as well as the public in general.”

This year’s festival on Aug. 24 will include glass blowing and other art demonstrations, food vendors and lots of music like the Bee Hives from Seattle (sort of like the White Stripes, according to Wimberly, but with a more techno sound), and rapper Can-U.

The festival is held between South 11th and 13th streets in Court ‘D’ and Market Street downtown, utilizing the parking lot behind Embellish Multi Space Salon that owner Patricia Lecy-Davis generously donated for a sound stage.

As a fundraiser and to build excitement for the festival, local musicians who performed at Glass Roots last year have released an eclectic CD of their music. Priced at only $10 each, the CD includes 10 songs by 10 different bands or individual singer/songwriters playing everything from acoustic folk to ambient-influenced material. It is available at Embellish (1121 Court ‘D’) and other locations in metro Tacoma while supplies last.

Festival organizers are still booking music acts and lining up other participants. For more information or to find out how to volunteer, visit www.tacoma-arts.com or call Wimberly at (253) 226-7070 or email hwimberly@comcast.net.

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