Art in the Open festival gets ready for big night in Charlottetown

The annual Art in the Open festival is getting geared up for its major event, happening Saturday, Aug. 27 in Charlottetown.

Art in the Open presents art installations in unlikely places around the city, as a way to increase public awareness and understanding of contemporary art in all its forms.

Some of those forms are highly imaginative, and have become favourites, such as the March of the Crows, and the Field of Fire in Victoria Park.

It's the sixth annual festival, and Pan Wendt, curator of the Confederation Centre Art Gallery, and the co-curator of Art in the Open told CBC Mainstreet's Karen Mair the organizers think it's grown to the right size.

"We're really happy with the scale of the event. We did have one year, 2014, when it was bigger, and we found that a lot of people had trouble seeing the whole event," said Wendt. "It didn't seem to fit the scale of the city so well, so I really think 30 to 40 projects is perfect."

While most of the art installations are outside, seen in places such as Victoria Row and Connaught Square, there are a few indoorones despite the name, including at the public library and Memorial Hall.

"We have a Friday night preview event, which is a fundraiser at Memorial Hall at the Confederation Centre," said Wendt. "It's a ticketed event by a Toronto group called Choir!Choir!Choir!, where they're going to teach the audience to sing as a group of 300 people, a Tragically Hip song."

About half of the projects are by Island artists, while the rest come from across the country. Every province except Saskatchewan is represented this year, along withother artistsfrom as far away as Ohio and California.

And there's still lots of excitement for those annual events.

"The March of the Crows, it seems to grow every year into a bigger parade of kids and adults dressed up like crows," said Wendt. "And we also will have the fires in Victoria Park in the front field, we'll have that piece by Scott Saunders, it's become a real favourite, people just kind of take over and tend the fires, they bring marshmallows or they have people bring instruments and they take over the field."

The major events of the festival happen from 4 p.m. to midnight on Saturday, although there is plenty of art to discover in downtown Charlottetown before then. The schedule and locations can be found at artintheopenpei.com.

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