Art After Dark & A Week of Innovative Collaboration
by Zoë Kirsch
The Nantucket Arts Council’s (NAC’s) 17th Annual Arts Festival begins this Friday, August 28 and continues through Monday, September 7. This divertissement will feature local fine artists, artisans, thespians,authors, and musicians, as well as their impressive cooperative potential.
Arts Week begins with the brand new “InsomniACK – Art After Dark,” a night of businesses, non-profits, and galleries staying open until twelve midnight. “InsomniACK” is modeled after the “White Night” or Nuit Blanche Arts Festival traditions that are held each year in cities around the globe.
Elisabeth Hazell, Festival Chair, who spent five years in Montreal at art school, decided to bring a Nuit Blanche to Nantucket just last year. “I thought it would be fun to recreate something similar to what I saw in Canada, but on a more appropriate scale,” she relates. The “Art After Dark” model fits beautifully with Nantucket. “We don’t have a massive venue,” Hazell says. “So the ‘InsomniACK’ idea really works – small venues and galleries featured as part of a bigger event.”
Featuring Nantucket artists in the nighttime has benefits. For one thing, as Hazell observes, many people work during the day. “InsomniACK” is everyone’s opportunity to see what the Nantucket artist community has to offer. What’s more, a night setting will truly lend a special, celebratory vibe.
The NAC has invited the entire Nantucket community to participate in this fine arts night. Businesses are welcome to stay open until midnight, have sales, offer snacks, and the like; painters, sculptors, musicians, and dancers —all artists, in fact—are encouraged to plan events.
How has the public reacted to Nantucket’s first Nuit Blanche thus far? “The response,” Hazell discloses, “has been overwhelmingly positive, particularly in terms of the initial feedback. I’ve gotten three ‘No’s’ and over one hundred ‘Yes’s’ to participate in InsomniACK either as a venue provider or an exhibiting artist. Three versus a hundred! I was very pleased.”
As of press time, this Friday’s InsomniACK event includes art openings, gallery receptions, film showings, a theatre performance, trunk shows, a scavenger hunt, a fashion lecture, special events at historic sites and museums, a fashion contest, and live music.
The Arts Festival on Nantucket has been going strong for years. Reggie Levine, President Emeritus of the Arts Council, recounts that the Arts Festival all started with an organization called the Arts Alliance. “That is where the festival began,” he affirms. “Then the Arts Alliance, along with the Festival, was absorbed by the Arts Council. The affair has certainly grown: it was fairly simple to begin with. Now, it includes all the arts and involves almost all of the various organizations that touch upon the arts on Nantucket.” What has changed since the Festival’s founding? Not much, Reggie replies. Except the event grows more epic each year.
In addition to InsomniACK, the 17th Arts Festival will offer a myriad of to-dos, including the Signature Arts Exhibit at the Preservation Institute, book talks, a free concert at the Dreamland on September 2, and “Clamstock” at Children’s Beach on September 6.
Hazell most eagerly anticipates the Signature Exhibit, which will run through the duration of the Festival. “My personal interest,” she says, “is visual arts. This year Christie Cure, our curator, has put together a group of artists you simply won’t see anywhere else. You could almost call these pieces, ‘underground.’” She continues, “This is the one Nantucket arts show you might actually see in a big city. It’s so refreshing to see there are so many kinds of visual art being done on island.” This exhibit, aptly titled Challenges and Chance Encounters: Expecting the New/Encountering the Unexpected will open with a reception from 6 to 8 pm this Friday evening, and will be open until midnight during InsomniACK and from noon to 8 pm daily through September 6. Cure describes it as a “fascinating exploration of experimental art” by painters, photographers, textile artists, and sculptors. It will be located in Preservation Institute: Nantucket, upstairs at 11 Centre Street.
When it comes to the Festival’s mission, Hazell puts it best: “To not only promote the arts on Nantucket, but also connect residents and visitors with artists that wouldn’t ordinarily be featured here. I really hope people come away from this event with a sense of connection with the artistic community on Nantucket. We have a terrific group of hardworking artists here who sometimes get overshadowed. I hope people will discover something new, make a connection.”
The Nantucket Arts Festival is one of many programs the NAC facilitates year-round. The Council offers grants to local schools and cultural organizations, scholarships to students pursuing higher education in any number of the arts, a young people’s concert series, and much more.
Visit www.nantucketartscouncil.org for more information on the NAC and a complete schedule of Nantucket Arts Festival events and listing of participants.
