Sunday, January 10, 2010
Arts & Extras: Marginal Arts Fest to return
STEPHANIE KLEIN-DAVIS The Roanoke Times
Ralph Eaton (left) has designed and built with John Johnson an 8-foot-tall "Art Rat," which will be a float in the Marginal Arts Festival parade in February. The metal rat will be cloaked in faux fur in time for the parade. The float has more than 100 pounds of steel and includes bicycle parts, wheelchair wheels, a Ubu stick and a rubber chicken.
Arts & Extras column
Mike Allen, arts columnist
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The Marginal Arts Festival is returning to Roanoke for the third straight year, this time complete with a mascot: a giant rat.
If reading that made you blink, well, that's probably part of the point. Just imagine what the reaction to the parade float will be.
Although really, the 8-foot-tall varmint, which creator Ralph Eaton calls the "Art Rat," is rather cute.
Last year's Marginal Arts Festival included a parade, one of the events that's returning, and this year Eaton, who is organizing the parade for the festival, wanted to build a float to go with it. He also thought the festival needed a mascot, and decided to kill two birds with one stone. "A rat is a rather marginalized animal," he said.
The Marginal Arts Festival, which takes place Feb. 11 to 16, celebrates the offbeat, unusual and marginalized in arts. Events will include exhibits both in institutions such as the Taubman Museum of Art and the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University and in alternative art spaces such as The Water Heater in Roanoke's Old Southwest neighborhood, as well as silent films with live scores, jazz, performance art and the parade on Feb. 13.
Festival director Brian Counihan said the event would be both a "carnival of the absurd" and "a very serious attempt at creating a community dialogue through the arts."
Eaton, 51, has much experience with parade floats. A Patrick Henry High School graduate, he spent 10 years building floats for the Rose Parade before returning to Roanoke to be a caretaker for his ailing parents.
Now, he said, "I stay very busy just trying to be an artist."
Casual strollers along Campbell Avenue might have noticed some of the strange art Eaton has been responsible for in the front window of Community High School for Arts & Academics at the corner of Second Street and Campbell Avenue, including a large octopus-like tangle of bright neon-yellow cloth tubes and, more recently, a large interconnected creation sewn together using pieces of plush animals.
Eaton said he is also working on a version of the stuffed-animal creation that can be carried by several people in the manner of the dragons in Chinese New Year parades.
(An actual Chinese New Year celebration, in collaboration with the Taubman Museum and Local Colors, will also be part of the festival.)
Eaton noted that last year's parade didn't just attract attention in Roanoke. The arts publication Brooklyn Rail wrote up the event in the context of a growing trend of art parades.
About 50 people watched the parade last year, and Eaton said he'll be satisfied if the event attracts that many this year, though he'd be delighted if the number grew. And he's also still actively seeking artists and performers to participate in the parade.
Passes to the Marginal Arts Festival are $20. One price covers all events. For more information about the festival, call 345-1688 or visit www.marginalarts.com.
For more information about the parade, visit the Second Annual Marginal Arts Festival Parade page on Facebook.
Roanoke artist's work at General Assembly
Jenny McKenzie, who paints and draws under the name Jenny Ohs, has to overcome a challenge every time she creates a picture.
The artist, who recently moved to Roanoke from Prince William County, contracted viral encephalitis in preschool. The illness severely damaged her vision and hearing and left her with limited use of her hands.
But she still has enough vision to enjoy her art, she says. She draws animals and landscapes by holding the pen or pencil in her left fist, tucking her left thumb under her chin, and moving her left shoulder.
She has exhibited in a show for deaf-blind artists and at galleries and craft festivals, including Art on a Mission in Roanoke.
From Jan. 13 to March 13 —-- corresponding with the time the Virginia General Assembly is in session in Richmond —- 14 of McKenzie's colored pen and pencil drawings will hang in the General Assembly building as part of an exhibit showcasing Virginia artists.
For more information about McKenzie, visit www.freewebs.com/artbyohs.
A look at Vietnam
The History Museum of Western Virginia will host a presentation by Roanoke resident David Helmer, a U.S. Army veteran who served with a transportation company in the Vietman War in 1965 and returned to the country in 2009 to visit. "Vietnam —- Then and Now" features photographs taken in in 1965 and 2009 as well as a first-person account by Helmer of his travels.
The event takes place at 7 p.m. Thursday in the History Museum on the third floor of Center in the Square in downtown Roanoke. Admission $5. For more information call 342-5770 or visit www.history-museum.org.
Grant workshop
The Virginia Commission for the Arts will hold a grant overview and application workshop from 10 a.m. to noon Wednesday at Montgomery-Floyd Regional Library at 125 Sheltman St. in Christiansburg. Participants are encouraged to download the "2010-2011 Guidelines for Funding" as well as appropriate applications to bring to the workshop at www.arts.virginia.gov.
For more information, call 382-6965.
On the Arts blog
On the Arts & Extras blog you'll find information on new art exhibits that have opened at Washington and Lee University and other culture-related happenings. Check it out at blogs.roanoke.com/arts.
