Somewhere between the cupcakes and the ciabatta, a cluster of singers will belt out love ballads. Watercolor landscape paintings will provide a backdrop to the rods and reels for sale at Front Range Anglers. The tale of Little Red Riding Hood will be retold — for adults — with shadow puppets on the walls of a dance studio. Amid the shelves of cumin and curry at Savory Spice Shop, stories about chocolate, salt and food will be told. The North Boulder Recreation Center swimming pool will become a stage.
It’s all part of Boulder Arts Week’s efforts to remind the city of the vibrant arts scene present here, to bring it out of doors to meet with the people where they are. Of course, people are also invited in to traditional venues to see the many concerts, theater and dance performances, film screenings and visual art exhibitions that go on all the time and from March 27 to April 4 have been welcomed under the umbrella of Boulder Arts Week.
“The hope is that there will be art everywhere, and as the week progresses, no person will be in Boulder and not have a creative collision, so to speak,” says Deborah Malden, arts liaison and advisor for Boulder Chamber, who serves on the event’s steering committee. “Nationally and internationally, art is being taken out of traditional spaces and being made available in places that are unexpected, and I think it delights people and engages them in unexpected ways. … The view of public art is changing — public art can be an experience. It doesn’t have to be an art installation.”
Boulder Arts Week was created in 2014 following conversations between the executive directors of the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art and the Dairy Center for the Arts on how to increase the city’s visibility as an arts destination. Last year’s 10-day event included 750 artists from 115 organizations and 120 events — not counting events that occurred multiple times throughout the week, in which case the tally is more like 439 — in 116 venues. An estimated 14,300 people attended, 25 percent of whom came from outside Boulder County, according to audience surveys.
“Overwhelmingly, the artists who participated felt like it was a really good start,” says Emily K. Harrison, Boulder Arts Week project manager. Of artists surveyed after the 2014 event, 90.6 percent said they were likely to participate again.
It’s not curated.
“Anyone who wants to be involved, can get involved,” Harrison says.
In addition to inviting artists out of traditional doors — and inviting audiences in — Boulder Arts Week also brings artists together in the name of support, visibility and perhaps even collaboration. Third Law Dance/Theater and Boulder Bach Fest’s joint venture “Bach UnCaged” is one of those (see full story on page 35).
The week is also about supporting the next generations of artists. This year, there’s an increased participation from University of Colorado students, a trend Malden says she hopes to see built on in years to follow. And the bakery-boundchoir? That’s the Cantabile Singers, and they’re collecting musical instruments to be refurbished and distributed to Boulder County students who can’t afford them, both during their mini concert at 2 p.m. on Sunday, March 29 at the Pearl Street Whole Foods and throughout the week at the Boulder Public Library. Last year, they collected more than 75 instruments, according to Linda Haertling, with Cantabile Singers.
She points to examples from around the world that show that when kids are involved in music, high school graduation rates increase.
“Music saves children’s lives and gives them a future,” she says.
“In Boulder County, there is a big need for this kind of thing,” she adds of the music instrument drive. “There are a lot of students living at or in the poverty level.”
Attendees can access places they might not otherwise be taken — or even know exist, like into a metalsmithing studio.
Beth Merkel founded Boulder Metalsmithing Association in 2009 after moving to Colorado and not finding a shared studio space or easyaccess classes for metalsmithing in the Boulder area. On April 3, they’ll host a grand opening for a new studio that will offer space for members to work and for monthly demonstrations and weekly classes.
“I think the fact that Boulder Arts Week raises awareness of the arts even during the short time of year is very helpful, especially to more of the less visible arts,” Merkel says. “There’s a lot of exposure for the performing arts in Boulder and less so for the visual arts.”
The resident creative pulse in town will get an infusion of new blood during the week as artists from out of town are drawn in. The play Misterman is one such example. The production was developed by a New York City-based team that was first able to produce it at the Pagosa Springs Center for the Arts in October. The project was tough, rewarding, and seemed to deserve a search for somewhere else it might have an extended life after its southern Colorado premiere, says Craig MacArthur, who stars in the show. Their eyes turned toward Boulder, and the Dairy management nudged them toward an open slot during Boulder Arts Week.
The play itself is about a fervently religious central man MacArthur compares to an onion.
“Bit by bit, he’s revealed as the play goes on,” he says. “It’s like spending time with somebody and you really get to see the depths of them and the question becomes, can you see the good with the bad? Can you write somebody off after you’ve gotten to know them? Can you accept everything about them?”
Those thematic elements sparked a lot of conversation at talkbacks during the Pagosa Springs run. MacArthur says what seemed to resonate with those audiences was the stigma of mental illness.
“It was interesting to see people in the audience who knew each other, but didn’t know that the other person had a nephew or a daughter who was suffering from depression or schizophrenia,” MacArthur says. “That was really exciting for us, to know that we had affected that change, even as outsiders. … What is art and what is theater if it is not a platform for furthering community discussions and community conversations?”
He’s reached out to mental health professionals to participate in those conversations when Misterman comes to Boulder, as well as recruiting experts to speak to the play’s other elements.
“We’re trying to use the play as glue to bring people together,” he says.
Of course, the week brings together more than just audiences.
“When you work alone, when you’re very insular trying to do things as a sole theater company or a sole painter or a sole sculptor, it can be a very lonely experience, and I don’t think it should be so when you have a community come together and you have artists of all natures joining hands, joining arms, the presence is just that much bolder and more powerful,” MacArthur says. “Boulder Arts Week is fantastic in that regard. It’s bringing old and new into the fold and letting everybody work together.”
ON THE BILL:
Boulder Arts Week, March 29 to April 4. Opening Party Friday, March 27 at Boulder Museum of Comtemporary Art. 1750 30th St., Boulder, 303-443-2122. Free. A full schedule of events is at www.boulderartsweek.org.
