stART on the Street = Huge Success

photo number 01 - (click photo)	I got to the stART on the Street festival/fair thing early for set-up and assisted a woman who I went to high school with (Stacy) with hanging up pieces of cardboard along the Santiago's Market fence, so that kids could help in creating a street mural. As we did this, other volunteers brought bottles of water to volunteer tables and others set up stages for musicians. Meanwhile, a large section of South Main Street was slowly closed to all street traffic. The transformation from busy downtown street to colorful arts district fair was amazing! After I dropped off my stuff for my "booth" and drove back to the Registry of Motor Vehicles lot, I saw an artist with an easel on the corner of Madison & Main painting. I would love to see MORE scenes like this happen safely in the future in Worcester's Arts District.
photo number 02 - (click photo)	After some confusion as to where tables/booths were supposed to be set up and how cars dropping stuff off were supposed to exit without toppling over peoples' set-ups, we all set up in the center of the street, back to back, thereby creating aisles on the outsides of the street near the sidewalks for attendees to stroll through and check out all the art. When I finally got myself situated, the Action Geek / dsquared booth was really a re-creation of sorts of my livingroom complete with my coffee table, gold livingroom chair, gold ottomon and round bamboo-like glass-covered end table thing. I got so many compliments on having the most comfortable chair in the whole festival. Plus, festival volunteers loved helping fill in for me as I went to take a break, because they got to lounge in the chair with their feet up on the ottomon.
photo number 03 - (click photo)	South Main Street was full of every possible kind of artist - I had a jewelry maker to my left and a chalk artist/musician to my right, with two fine painters behind me. There were photographers, bands, sculpters, more jewelry people... you name it... Right near my "booth" was Santiago's parking lot where people were doing poetry readings, music of all sorts and down toward the Chandler Street end of the festival, there was a band stage where dancers, bands and other performers did their thing. You might think that it was one big noisy mess, but the two stages didn't clash with eachother in the slightest. Jim Sweet A couple tables away, my friend Jim Sweet had his set up showing all of his pen/ink Escher meets Bosch type of work. He claimed that was trying to look like he was from Fight Club. Uh...
photo number 04 - (click photo) photo number 05 - (click photo)	I didn't wander around all that much, because I was so busy talking with people, telling them what Action Geek is all about and how it's made and where the ideas come from. A father or a 10-12 yr old was asking me, with his son, exactly how the comics were made and I told him, pretty much: pencil, ink, erase, scan and Photoshop. Many people asked how the pages were so glossy. Many people asked where they could buy them and on and on... It was great. I can only imagine how much interest other artists had in their work. I ran into all kinds of people: old high school friends I hadn't seen in years, former co-workers, scene-friends from Ralph's and Vincent's. I spoke with Brian Goslow from Wormtown.org and saw Erick Godin from Lucky Dog. Ran into Mauro from WCCA-TV13 and even spoke with who I think was a State Representative. Long lost friends, new friends, college students and every one inbetween...

Chalk drawing

ACID billboard

2 attendees

Yes, I should have gotten around a bit more to take more photos, but I was having a blast talking with people and selling Action Geek comic'zines and giving away promotional postcards and stuff. The fair was an incredible success from what I could tell and I can't wait until the next one.