Today VirtuALL FestivALL offically begins!

From now until the end of June we will post at least once a day with details on what you can experience at home during this pandemic year for Charleston’s annual festival of all arts. For 2020, FestivALL is when The Internet Becomes A Work Of Art. Every day we will bring you up to date on this year’s VirtuALL FestivALL, plus we will flash back to some of our video coverage from previous years, and I will dig into the archives for one post in the Monday Morning Art Exhibit, collecting some of my favorite pieces from the nearly fifteen years that I’ve been posting my original work here in PopCult.

On this first day you’ll want to check out The Alban Arts Center’s Eugene O’Neill Project, which I told you about Friday.  You can lso participate in the CAMC “Run For Your Life” virtual run/walk. The Show Your Pride window display contest is already underway, and you can vote HERE. Ice cream and the arts is also underway, and details for this coloring contest for kids can be found HERE.  The Virtual Art Fair will open on June 14th on the FestivALL website – check it regularly for the gallery and links to shop your favorite WV artisans this summer.

You can also vote on The Artbus, check out the Art-for-ALL Kids’ Juried Art Exhibition look into the “Faces of First Responders” Tribute Mural and teens can participate in Life: Unedited. FestivALL is off to a strong VirtuALL start!

The FestivALL Flashback

Today we’re going to bring you a two-part video that dates all the way back to the second edition of FestivALL, in 2007. This is the handiwork of Radio Free Charleston Big Shot (and now Mrs. PopCulteer), Melanie Larch. This was our first video of Charleston becoming a work of art and you’ll find our memories compacted into a nice, neat little ten-minute video package. We had a blast at FestivALL that year, and I had a blast not being the video guy (except for a few shots). Mel even composed and performed an original tune in honor of the FestivALL Catfish for the end of the second part. Listen hard and you might even hear me playing eerie ebow guitar in the background.

This was done so long ago that we had to break it into two parts because YouTube wouldn’t allow videos longer than a few minutes.

The Monday Morning Art Exhibit

We’ll wrap up each Virtuall FestivALL post with an example of Monday Morning Art, which has been a weekly thing here in the blog since 2006. Each week I post a piece of my artwork, much of it digital, for no other reason than to keep me making art on a regular basis so I don’t forget how. Today we go back to September, 2010 for an abstract digital painting I call “Radiophonic.” I was trying to work with textures and colors that aren’t normally in my repertoire. I also went for a bit of a Ralph Steadman vibe with the line quality. There’s not much more to add about this one. I do like the way it came out.

Originally I’d hoped to produce a catalog to go along with this virtual exhibit, but time constraints prevented that from happening. Maybe we’ll be able to pull it off in time for PopCult’s 15th anniversary late this August.

Click the image to see a larger version, if you want.