Fleisher: ARTspiration

A Free Community Arts Festival for the Whole Family

10:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m., Sunday, 31 May 2009

The nation's oldest tuition-free art school, the Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial, presents the third annual ARTspiration! — a FREE community arts festival. This outdoor festival will take place between Fleisher's 719 Catharine Street and 705 Christian Street buildings and along the 700 block of Catharine Street. Family-oriented activities will include free bicycle-art stations, free art-making activities, a plant and herb sale, bake sale, book sale, art and craft sale, free performances, and a prize raffle. Neighborhood food vendors will also be on hand selling refreshments and treats for the whole family.

Booths will include new and familiar faces. Eggplants, cantaloupes, peppers, bananas and tomatoes will make their return at the popular “Play with Your Food” booth, where young people can transform them into zany creatures and colorful characters. Other returning booths will include face painting, printmaking, button-making, sidewalk chalking, portrait drawing, and more.

Bicycle-art workshops for all ages are new this year. Festival-goers are invited to bring along their bikes for an artistic makeover. “We looked across Southeast Philadelphia and saw the bicycle as an object that cut across every neighborhood and was perfect for artistic personalization,” explained festival coordinator and Fleisher's Special Projects Manager, Joseph Gonzales. “This idea was inspired by so many — Fleisher students, neighborhood children, area teenagers, commuters, cyclists, couriers, food deliverers — all using bicycles whether out of necessity, to be green, to be economical, for recreation, for wellness, to be seen, for work, you name it. We wanted to capture the energy of art-bike expressions like the scraper bikes of Oakland, California, courier bikes, college competitions, and high-art bikes. It's an idea that seems right for the times and just happens to coincide with National Bike Month!”

This year's festival will also feature several guests. The Please Touch Museum will arrive with their Play Patrol, a travel-sized version of the museum, including foam dumb bells, hula hoops, bubbles, sidewalk paint, and Floam. The Philadelphia Museum of Art's Division of Education Community Program will offer sunflower hat and medieval crown-making activities. Master muralist Cesar Viveros and Fuego Nuevo will lead an Aztec hieroglyph art-making activity in both Spanish and English. Performances will spotlight family-based Yaretzi, a Mexican folk dance group, a teen break dance demonstration, and Cambodian Classical Dance pieces. On the music front, DJ Jesus Soto returns as MC, spinning music for the whole family, with interludes by accordionist Benjamin Laden.

ARTspiration! coincides with Challenge 3 — the final installment in this season's Wind Challenge Exhibitions at Fleisher, as well as My Community, My World, Myself — the 8th annual exhibition of artwork by participants in Fleisher's Community Partnerships in the Arts (CPA) program. The CPA program places practicing artists into public school classrooms and after-school programs where they introduce art-making as a way for youth to explore core academic subjects and community themes. “By holding ARTspiration! at the same time as the CPA exhibition, we are encouraging area residents to recognize the creative achievements of our community's young people and to celebrate their accomplishments,” notes Magda Martinez, Director of Education and Community Engagement. Both the CPA and Challenge exhibitions will be open to the public throughout the festival.

This event is free and open to the public.

Photograph from ARTspiration! 2008 by Aaron G. Stock

ARTspiration! comprises one part of a larger plan to make Fleisher's classes, events, and exhibitions more visible and accessible to Philadelphia residents, especially those living in Fleisher's immediate community of Southeast Philadelphia. In Fall 2007, Fleisher received a Wallace Foundation Excellence Award to conduct an investigation of how community members perceive Fleisher and to implement programmatic changes and to respond to their needs. ARTspiration! is one of several ways in which Fleisher will open its doors to new audiences in the coming year, with emphasis placed on providing an introduction to art education programs.

“Accessibility is at the core of our mission,” said Executive Director Matthew Braun. “ARTspiration! is a way to open our doors even wider by inviting people to stop by and learn how easy it is to become a part of our community.”

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