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Happy to be arts crazy

August 29, 2024   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

Such a luscious, lustrous, lovely or loverly is fun to say too, time of year, into which we are merrily rolling. I know it seems as though there are arts things happening all the time and for those who were not anxious, enthusiastic or just as happy to say no to the cottage trip that kept highways buckled in traffic of folk trying to escape the bad air and crowds of the city or urban area, they still had plenty to do right here in Orangeville and Dufferin with all the festivals and arts events.

If one attempts to itemize them all, tries to list them as well chronologically, it is entirely possible one will leave an event out, feelings offended and humbleness for omissions required – a little too tender, given the trials otherwise that beset us all.

Let us agree then, that from the real launch of summer by the hugely popular for fans near and far to come to Orangeville and revel in its Blues and Jazz Festival, which in the last few years, has been attracting musicians from around the world. The Orangeville Opera House was included as a venue as well as the tents, restaurants and the streets themselves, with vendors adding to the mix.

From that weekend, our inboxes are topped up by announcements of events and exhibitions. It is wonderful.

Just to be an artist in this region, for that matter, is to be as pretty well as busy as one wishes, for the opportunities to submit, and to participate are numerous.

Across the town, art-based summer camps spring up and working parents might be able to see their children well-engaged in visual arts, dance, and theatre arts. Some organizations are so determined to see the kids involved, they manage to figure out terms of payment with the parents or guardians.

The Caledon Music Festival was another highlight, this year ranging across Caledon with four completely diverse concerts, classical in the main. The concert that was set on a Sunflower farm, 60 acres of sunflowers at the moment of their fullest bloom, focused on jazz, with a Latin mix. There was much more music to this concert that included a Grand piano in the outdoor event. So much to say, but to us, this was an extraordinary vision.

Every month, Headwaters Arts, housed as part of the Alton Mill Arts Centre in Alton presents a collection of artists and a theme for them to follow and a whole new exhibit of imagination and skill is hung in the beautiful gallery at the Mill. The Alton Mill Arts Centre is a Heritage building, an old mill, that Jeremy and Jordon Grant have worked for many years to restore and, in part, rebuild as needed. Resisting calls to sell or convert the building into apartments they united the arts community to some extent, under one roof. It is another centre for concerts and events in this wide area of such celebration.

By and large, autumn is a downturn in my year. I am not a fan of winter. Yet, during the amazing couple of weeks when the world is a landscape of colour in the changing trees, one would be made of stone not to admire those fall days.

People begin to travel less; with the pending shadow of a return to our routines of steady working hours and students going to school.

Theatre Orangeville, which was busy with Young Company productions, theatre arts camps for youngsters and their arts festival, follows with a quiet couple of weeks, then, suddenly opens with several bangs: add-on shows just to remind patrons it is time to return to the theatre for the new season of plays.

Theatre goes to the schools and, with luck, drama and bands will still be part of schools’ extra-curriculum.

Someone said to me recently that Stand Up comedy (coming to Theatre Orangeville on Sept. 7) is a mirror of society. “And that matters,” he said.

For sure. To extend the thought, the truest history is in the art of the age. Even the grand historical paintings over hundreds of years of painters tell more poignantly, the truth of the the wars and conquests; the poetry defines for us the morality and thinking; the artists, not the victorious historians better tell the stories of the past. The authors and playwrights, the scratching on stone and drawn figures in tombs and parchment give a clearer picture of more ancient times than even finding chiselled streets under more modern pathways.

Sometimes, more and more, extremely misguided businesses and governments are inclined to want to cut back on the arts that are taught in schools; recently, some arts councils have been more tightfisted as their own funding allows. These are the mistakes of increasingly barren minds, setting traps to reduce us and to stop us from reading old books lest they lead us astray, as though we have no judgement of our own.

Let us open the windows to the world of art long ago and yet to come, to inform our children of the dangers of keeping us from art, as though numbers could replace it.


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