This Week In Art/Culture/Entertainment
By John Swartz
After last weekend’s full schedule of every available minute occupied by one event or another, this holiday weekend is rather light. So, it might be a good time to do some longer range notification of events.
There is one event happening Friday, Saturday and Sunday at ODAS Park, The Great Benjamins Circus is in town. The first show is at 4:30 p.m. Friday, then again at 7:30. Saturday the first show is at 1:30 P.M., Then again at 4:30 and 7:30. Sunday they drop the evening performance.
They have the range of I didn’t know humans could do that kind of acts. You can get tickets at the door, or online. There is a range of types of seating (but some are sold out for some performances), and admission is generally $40 for adults and $35 for kids.
This has been the weekend for the Rotary/Lions Funfest, which isn’t happening this year. Instead the Rotary Club is sponsoring a concert at the Aqua Theatre with the band, Tons of Clay, from noon to 4 p.m. August 3.
Almost Made it
Before getting to things ahead, a look back. Saturday I made to everything, The Electrical Vehicle show at Centennial Park, Mardi Gras, a couple of art exhibit openings, and the Hawaiian Glow Party, but not in that order.
The Orillia Museum of Art and History had a large crowd on hand for the opening of Jeanette Luchese’s solo show, The Process Informs Me: Contemporary Abstract Frescoes. Each of the pieces are abstracts, but what makes them special is that they are frescoes. Now, despite knowing one or two things about art, I found out my idea of what a frescoe is not correct.
The first clue is each of the pieces look like regular paintings of a medium sized, regular shape. I thought a frescoe was the style of art painted directly on a wall, like in Italy.
What it really is, is a method of painting, a fairly exacting method in which the paint is applied directly on plastered walls before the plaster dries. Jeanette let her plaster application dry, but that didn’t mean it made the painting easier.
The danger is having limited opportunity to change once the paint is on because it soaks into the plaster, even more so when it’s wet. Even in an abstract exercise, one still has to have a pretty good idea of what it’s going to look like when it’s finished (does an artist ever think a work is finished?).
The exhibit is up until October 19, so drop in and see how the work turned out.
Also opening was Pawtraits, a series of mostly photos from the museum’s collection featuring people and their pets, and Reflections Of Our Roots Orillia From 3,000 BCE To 2024.
Still up until September 14 is Stacey Tyrell’s Backra Bluid, a series of portraits of women.
Cloud Gallery opened a group show called The Great Big Summer Show. With work from more than 30 artists the gallery represents, and all the pieces being larger than 36×36, it’s quite a stunning show. One thing that jumped out at me was how the paintings were hung. There is a lot to be said for grouping and hanging the right pieces next to each other.
Down by the water, Sustainable Orillia was holding their annual Electric Vehicle and E-Boat Show. This show was held in the fall and indoors. Out in the sunshine, where a polished car should be seen, they had more room to arrange the cars to best effect.
There appeared to be more cars on display than past years, and there were other vendors of sustainable electronic devices on hand.
Sustainable Orillia’s Electric Vehicle and E-Boat Show 
Mardi Gras at the Port of Orillia
The Mardi Gras event at the Port of Orillia only had a few boats decorated and did not appear to be the draw other events at the Port have been.
In the evening, the courtyard at Era 67 was filled with art for MarshMellow’s show, Twilight Piazza. There were other artists, Barbara Schmidt, Linda Gidora, MJ Pollak and Norman Robert Catchpole taking part. I had a great conversation with Norman. His work is detailed realism, mostly portraits of people and animals. You’ve seen his work around town. One of those places is Apple Annie’s where his piece, Picking Up The Pieces, was on display. He told me it was up on the wall only one day before it sold to someone from the United States.
Derick Lehmann’s Hawaiian Glow Party, at ODAS Park was not as well attended as his other fundraising events. It still raised $2,000 for Green Haven Shelter for Women. While I was there, the DJ played mostly 80s tunes and chose some I haven’t heard for some time. The dance floor was full the whole time I was there.
Sunday, well, that didn’t go as planned. The Wendell Ferguson concert at the Coulson Church was not on my agenda because it was happening at the same times as the celebration of life for Chuck Swire. The plan was to stay for an hour or two and go see the kids from OSS play at the Stephen Leacock Museum’s Sunday Serenade concert.
Except, Tangents was scheduled to play about the time the Leacock event was going to start. I have been to a few events Tangents were on the bill, late, and had to bug out before they performed, so I decided I wouldn’t do that again. It was a good move, Tangents are pretty good.
Then I was going to leave in time to catch the Orillia Big Band do the Sunday evening concert at the Aqua Theater, except Chuck’s band, Rellikdog, was going to get on stage last and after being there all afternoon it would have been pretty crappy not to see that.
There were so many bands even a few hours afterward it was difficult to separate who did what. but I did come away with some general impressions.
First, there are a number of pretty good drummers in the area, more than I previously thought. I didn’t previously know of many of the bands, but I gather most were from the general area of Orillia.
It was pretty loud all day, the operating genre was metal and it’s derivatives, so that was to be expected. But, I was reminded it’s not necessarily the volume level of the sound that is problematic, but the frequencies. Mismanagement of frequencies is what leaves people with ringing in their ears or feeling like all sound the rest of the day are reaching their ears after passing through a hat.
That’s why a good soundboard operator is to be protected at all costs. Good frequency management is in short supply. Congrats to Steven Henry for tuning everybody up so well. Each band has their own sound and keeping those distinctions while the final mix is not excruciating takes some skill.
On distinctions, while most pedestrians kind of think of metal bands all sounding the same and using the same musical devices, that is not true. It is most evident when watching 8 or 9 bands on a row. There is a variety of sounds, and even though most of the bands had similar structures to their music, if one is looking for it there are differences, which most of the bands used to their advantage.
I liked each of the band’s performances. I thought Rellikdog had the most distinct music of the bunch. Dave Sibb filled in for Chuck’s parts as guitarist and singer. It’s been a long time since I saw the band, but to me it sounded he and the band worked together for much longer than the month since Chuck died. Band member Adam Cooper also sang some of the tunes Chuck would normally have sung.
People were asked to bring food donations for the Sharing Place and there were several tables heaped with bags of food.
What’s Next
Of course we have the Waterfront Festival at the Port of Orillia (August 9-11) The Rotary Downtown Classic Car Show (August 24), Starry Night (August 24), the Rama Pow Wow August 24 and 25) and the Pirate Party at the Port (August 31) happening this month, but fall is looming.
The Orillia Youth Centre has a number of fundraising concerts happening in September. Kevin Gangloff has organized fall concerts for several years, but this time he’s got a bunch happening, instead of just one.
He’s bringing in Andrew Alli (harp) and Josh Small (guitar) from Richmond, Virginia, who will play some gritty, old time blues to do three concerts September 20 and 21. At the first The Griddle Pickers and Sammy (Sam Johnston) will also play. The second, on the 21st, they do an afternoon with Sammy and Bella Frances. The third is in the evening on the 21st with the Ronnie Douglas Blues Band.
Sammy and Bella will also do a concert September 22 at 5 p.m. All those happen at Creative Nomad Studios.
September 28 Lance Anderson’s Matchedash Parish headline a show at St. Paul’s Centre with Roger Harvey opening. On the 29th Roger teams up with Sky Wallace for a concert at the youth center.
New to the schedule are two concerts with Lenny Lashley, Nixon Boyd and Rebekah Hawker on October 10 and 11.
Closing out the series of concerts is one at St. Paul’s with Steve Poltz and Danny Michel. Tickets for any, or all, of those are available online.
Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital Foundation has a fundraising concert October 5 at St. Paul’s Centre with the Tragically Hip clone band Grace 2. Get tickets online.
Arts Orillia has Orillia Hall of Famer and host of the CBC’s Quirks and Quarks, Bob McDonald in as the first part of their Future Fest series of events. He’ll be at St. Paul’s Centre September 23. You can get tickets online.
Arts Orillia also has the Jazz Festival in October and the headline concert is with Caity Gyorgy and Thompson Egbo-Egbo Trio. Those tickets are here.
This one is way out, January 18, 2025, but if you didn’t know now tickets are on sale for OMAH’s annual fundraising gala, you’ll be just a little bit miffed because it usually sells out. Author/adventurer Adam Shoalts is the speaker. Get them online.
(Photos by Swartz – SUNonline/Orillia and Images Supplied) Main: Artwork of Raune-lea Marshall and Deby Melillo at the Twilight Piazza, event.
