At the Momentum Art & Music Festival this weekend, you will get the chance to meet Poof.
And Poof is going to be hungry.
WHAT: 2019 Momentum Art & Music Festival
WHEN: 5:30 to 9 p.m., Thursday; 5 p.m. Friday (ProMedica Summer Concert Series Presents Chaka Khan); and noon to 10 p.m. Saturday.
WHERE: Promenade Park along the Maumee River off Summit Street and beyond.
FOR SCHEDULES, MAPS AND MORE INFORMATION: momentumtoledo.org
“It eats the glowiest of foods and launches them through its translucent organs so that you can be entertained, and at the end it launches them out of its doughnut heart right at your head and it descends from the sky, and then you get to pick it up and feed it again,” said Poof’s creator, Toledo artist Bradley Scherzer. “I built this around the idea of a symbiotic relationship where this creature needs you to interact with it in order to survive. It rewards you for that interaction with something. In this case, you're feeding it and it's supposed to give you entertainment, give you joy.”
Poof is one of six interactive art installations at the third annual event, which focuses on glass, music, art and makers, and whose center is at Promenade Park with farther-reaching tentacles into the downtown area.
This year’s theme is light and interactivity. Read: The darker it is out, the better visually.
“A lot of the works we have this year, the public artworks, are really beautiful during the day, really aesthetically interesting and engaging, but at night they get even better. At sunset, all of them will start lighting up and it will definitely change that landscape at night,” said Crystal Phelps, Momentum coordinator for the Arts Commission of Greater Toledo, which organizes the event with ProMedica.
The event opens Thursday night with the incorporation of the Arts Commission’s monthly Art Loop and the kickoff of a yearlong celebration to commemorate the organization’s 60th anniversary. It is longest-established arts commission in Ohio; it was founded in 1959.
“What better way to celebrate 60 years than with a huge festival,” Phelps said. Visitors to the downtown area will get to check out Poof and the other installations, and engage with the many activities and performances linked to the loop, which has a Dancin’ In the Streets theme. At Gathered Glassblowing Studio on Huron Street, seven artists will begin making customized glass keys that will be presented to the city in October. (See News of Art in this section).
A reception will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday at the University of Toledo’s Center for the Visual Arts for the Intersection exhibition, a show that displays the collaborative glass projects of artists who worked with Pilkington Glass North America to create pieces that show both artistic and manufacturing applications of glass. The exhibition will stay open through Oct. 10.
On Friday night, the Arts Commission partnered with ProMedica to put on the last of its summer concert series and welcome Chaka Khan to the park stage. In between the opening act and Chaka Khan’s performance, the long-awaited decorative lighting system on the Anthony Wayne Bridge’s suspension cables will be lit up for the first time. Bowling Green artist Erwin Redl created the design, which will feature different lighting colors and patterns throughout the year.
Saturday is a full day of art, music and glass on the riverfront and, of course, makers at the second annual Mini Maker Faire from noon to 6 p.m. at Imagination Station, featuring more than 25 creators performing demos and offering hands-on activities.
After visitors feed Poof, they can check out the other installations: The Herd, a grouping of 200 luminous inflatable swim rings that represent the continued hope for healthy waterways; Aqueous, an interactive landscape of meandering pathways of light that engage visitors in interactive play; Sound Sculpture, musical cubes whose composition can be manipulated with movement; You Are Beautiful, a large-scale motivational sculpture; and Sunset Carryout, a large transparent sculpture that emulates a corner store.
The festival will have its share of live entertainment, including Super Nova, a digital animation festival that will be shown periodically on the large Promenade Park screen on Thursday and Saturday, live music and interactive dance performances, walking tours and river tours by boat, and roaming entertainment and public art projects throughout the park.
The Arts Commission raised about $400,000 from more than 50 organizations to put on this year’s event, an increase from 2018 of about $110,000, Phelps said. It allowed them to add two additional installations and extend the exhibition time for The Herd and Aqueous.
The organization said more than $15,000 people last year attended Momentum, which sunk an estimated $135,000 back into the arts.
“I think the one thing that is the most unique about momentum and especially Saturday, is when we say art, music, glass, and makers, it really is all of that,” said Arts Commission spokesman Malena Caruso. “I think it's a good example of thinking of traditional art mediums, things that people normally use when creating art, but also engaging animation, pulling in the herdlings, public art, interactive art, and really just showing the huge net that you can cast and really catch some amazing things.”
First Published September 19, 2019, 10:00 a.m.
