A local arts festival serves several functions and appeals to a wide cross-section of the community from infants, toddler and teens to parents and grandparents. As I made my way through the crowds I was reminded of the informal atmosphere one finds at a Renaissance fair or farmer’s market. There were many people milling about, most of whom had no seeming purpose or direction. Like a Renaissance fair there seemed to be a theme. Many were wearing casual, loose-fitting, colorful clothing. Another commonality included performance art such as juggling, singing and playing of non-electronic instruments. While much of this holds true for the farmers market, the patrons seem to be on a mission. Most signage in conversation is business-like and designed to aid in sales transactions. To be sure business was transacted at the arts festival. However, printed materials that I observed involved artistic performance, process, style, craftsmanship, etc. Also, once immersed in conversation topics often deviated from business to social contexts. I also observed this type of interaction among people filing past each other and coming to a stop upon finding a familiar face. In fact, one of my classmates realized that these types of impromptu gatherings were occurring at street intersections at some distance from the commotion at the individual booths.
At each booth I visited I found vocabulary both written and spoken unique to a particular style or process used to create a work of art or perform a craft. Some of these include Kiln-fired, lamp-worked, fritted, annealed, magnesium carbonate reticulated glaze for glass and pottery work. Bloomington chamber Singer’s booth included box office, oratory and hymnody. Others included, Astrograph, a process or shooting celestial bodies such as the Orion, Horse head, Cone and Rosette nebulas using an ultra-sensitive digital sensor which allows a hydrogen filter to block all visible light except for ionized hydrogen emissions. Interestingly, as Kristen K. observed in our group meeting, written literacy and specific terminology were unnecessary.
This was not so much an art’s fair as a social affair with opportunities to see and be seen, to talk, share and listen with others.
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ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your dig and final comment as well; I too agree the art's fair was a social affair, but it did offer much more than expected. It was interesting to see how your dig as the vocabularist was formed verses my physical enviromentist point of view. In the upper section where you said people seemed to milling around without a purpose, that was the purpose to enjoy without a purpose. The 4th Street Festival was a opportunity to use one's senses without reading or directions as I discovered in this literary analysis. Great work!
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this, I wish I would have gathered a group of friends and went to the fair. I would have loved to seen the sights on my own and then meet up with people to talk about what we saw.
ReplyDeleteYour post was very engaging! I felt as if I actually went to the fair. At the end of your post though I decided it was a good thing I didn't end up going because I would have needed a artist dictionary to understand what any of those words mean. I would have been lost trying to understand what vendors were selling and what their expertise was in. I also would have been too embarrassed to ask what everything means. This is probably my own fault, but I would imagine that a lot of people might feel this way.
ReplyDeleteI would have loved to have seen the astrograph, I've heard about the process but I assumed the equipment would have been outside the realm of what one would find in a local arts fair.
ReplyDeleteI can understand how most of the writing was mostly directed towards the transactions. That was very similar to our foodcourt experience.
You are right, the environment was so relaxed that at first is was hard to organize it into observations on paper. Your investigation of unique vocabulary was interesting too. I don't usually consider what language is unique to a place, though it is fun to sometimes imagine what an outsider hears when they catch an out of context phrase in a conversation.
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