Every year Night of Artists gets glitzier and more dazzling.
This year Night of Artist’s 20th anniversary is celebrated at the Enjoy Centre March 9 to 12 in partnership with St. Albert Mayor’s Celebration of the Arts.
NOA 20, as it is dubbed, is a festival of art and music that has expanded to exhibiting the works of 50 visual artists. That’s about 1,000 original art pieces forming a broad palette of materials and styles.
“We wanted to get more visual artists in the room. Demand has increased greatly,” said Phil Alain, NOA and Canada 150 Mosaic producer.
In the visual arts world, the former St. Albert resident is known as a go-big or go-home entrepreneur. In celebration of Canada’s sesquicentennial, Alain along with right-hand man Louis Lavoie created the Canada150Mosaic project.
The project will travel to 150 cities or towns across Canada where volunteer artists will gather to paint enough four-inch by four-inch tiles to fill an eight-foot by 12-foot mural.
The finished mural designed as a train car is a visual time capsule of that geographic region.
“There will be 150 communities connected coast-to-coast in the image of train cars. You will see the murals connected online and when you put them together it will be a storyboard of Canada,” explained Alain.
Throughout Friday and Saturday people from all over the region will be painting tiles for St. Albert’s train car and on Sunday at 1 p.m., the mural will be unveiled.
“It’s going to be very exciting.”
Friday night is filled with activities as folk noir accordionist Wendy McNeil entertains the crowds at 7 p.m. Also, at that time Louis Lavoie will paint one of his fabled performance pieces and at 9 p.m. cover band Stove Top performs.
As a late addition to the evening, Barry Bailey, founder of Seven Music Festival takes the opportunity to announce the lineup for the one-day fest on July 8.
Saturday is fired up with Samba Caliente, a Latin dance group and Los Morenos, a Flamenco rumba styled group.
Tickets are $25 and are available online at [email protected].
