Saturday marked the seventh annual Art in the Open festival, a multicultural bilingual event that encourages Islanders and visitors to explore and question their surroundings, said event co-coordinator Pan Wendt.
Wendt, who has been involved with the festival since the beginning in 2011, said it brings something new to the city for one day each summer.
“You see everybody walking around the city and looking at the city differently. I think it makes people appreciate public spaces, and it reminds you of how great it is to have spaces that are really just there to contemplate or hang out in for free.”
Wendt, who also coordinated with Becka Viau and D’Arcy Wilson on the project, said the festival is something people have come to look forward to each year.
“People know about it and it’s an automatic thing that people are waiting for,” he said.
One part of the festival that is always a crowd favourite is the March of the Crows, which this year saw several hundred people dressed as crows, cawing and squawking through the city streets, as thousands crowded the sidewalks to cheer them on.
Charlottetown resident Andrea MacDonald, said she has been attending the festival for several years, but this was the first year she saw the march.
“It’s very impressive,” she said. “It’s a little unsettling and beautiful at the same time.”
MacDonald said she enjoys attending the art festival and said it is an important event to have in the city.
“To me, it means magic. It means seeing our community in a completely different light and kind of waking up the senses and enjoying it in a new way.”
MacDonald’s friend Emma Werner agreed.
“It’s a really great community event,” she said. “It’s good exposure for local artists and it’s nice that we have some artists from away, too. It’s a really nice expression of how Charlottetown is changing and kind of what some of the young people here are into.”
One artist who travelled from Ontario to be part of the event, Jennifer Demitor, said she likes how the festival takes places in the natural landscape of downtown Charlottetown.
“It’s activating the parks and really engaging people in the natural space,” she said, adding it works well with her piece this year called “PODS”.
“My work is about the built environment reconnecting us with the natural environment, and as an architect I have an interest in using built materials to do that.”
Demitor, whose project this year was her third time participating in the festival, said she looks forward to returning each year.
“There is always an amazing quality of work, and people from P.E.I. are always so interested in engaging in it, so I think that’s what I like best.”
