Up Here wants you to wander through an urban playground, a downtown celebration of public art, so that’s why at the second edition of Sudbury celebration of urban art and music, you can stroll (or crawl, depending on your preference) through an artsy wonderland in Greater Sudbury’s core.
Up Here is promising “spectacle and surprise” on Saturday thanks to the creative talents of several artist collectives (get to know them below).
You can check out and interact with 10 art installations during the course of the festival.
Perhaps the most obvious installation is the massive geodesic dome that sits at the entrance of the Downtown Sudbury Playground.
“The dome represents what Up Here is all about. It represents walking into the strange, into the unknown,” said Andrew Knapp, co-founder of Up Here. “A geodesic dome consists of many small parts and patterns that make up one awesome whole. We feel that’s a pretty good representation of how each piece of art works together to makes one vibrant, glowing festival experience.”
Interact with the work of these wild artists
Northern Ontario Society of Architects (NOSA) has collaborated with Wood and Ink Design Collective. NOSA is one of the local grass-roots societies of the Ontario Association of Architects (OAA). NOSA provides a venue for dialogue between local architects, a support network for professional advice and opportunities for leadership, continuing education and community outreach. Wood and Ink is a local design collective comprised of husband and wife carpenter and architect, Matthew Schultze and Amber Salach.
John Smith is a Hamilton-based musician, director, and visual artist working in the fields of digital video, interactive installation, and mixed-media 2D work. His video for Young Rival's "Two Reasons" (who are playing at the festival, incidentally) in collaboration with Michigan-based artist James Kuhn, achieved viral success and was shortlisted for the Prism Prize Awards. His installation for Up Here will feature kinetic sculptures, dubbed “Spinners.” Varying in height from 4 feet to 8 feet, these alien trees will continuously rotate 360 degrees, powered by vertically-mounted rotisserie motors. Reminiscent of a distant celestial forest, the abstract shapes adorn a unified palette, and will reflect colourful refracted light across their surroundings.
Heretical Objects Collective is a multi-disciplinary cross-country co-operative of artists and administrators whose varied approaches and visions are bound together in the spirit of collaboration and a total observance of existential DIY.
Philippe Blanchard seeks to restore animation’s marvellous and magical nature. With its stalagmites and stalactites lit with stroboscopes and projectors, his Nouveau Troglodytes at the GNO will transform the gallery into an animated, psychedelic space bridging the distant past with the future’s possibilities.
Radha Chaddah is a Toronto visual artist and scientist. In her studio she designs light sculpture installations for indoor and outdoor exhibition. Her work examines the interconnected themes of knowledge, illusion, desire, and the unseen world.
Temple of the Mind evokes the process of memory formation in the brain, inspired by cell and molecular research on memory formation and by the idea that the mind is the centre of spirituality, alive with a multidimensional flow of energy.
Vanessa B Rieger works and lives in Downtown Toronto, creating hybrid video environments with sculptural components to immerse the audience in live visual environments. Rieger is the other member of VJ duo VIDEOMANCY.
Rae Miranda is a local fiber artist and an installation designer. For Up Here, Miranda will massage this intricate geometric 3D shape into her first large-scale sculpture. Encased in transparent lightweight tubes, colored cloud like matter will seemingly travel through well-defined lines, in turn caressing the urban cityscape.
Bruce Name is an American billionaire, playboy, philanthropist, and owner of Name Enterprises. After witnessing the murder of his parents as a child, he swore revenge on criminals, an oath tempered by a sense of justice. Name trains himself physically and intellectually and crafts a rat-inspired persona to fight crime.
Digital Forest Collective is curated by experimental musician, activist, media artist and scientist Brendan Lehman to form an ephemeral and temporary arcade, a platform where festival-goers can experience exclusively local games with the support of the Sudbury Game Design Challenge and Math and Computer Science Game Design Program at Laurentian University.
Why not crawl?
In a separate, but related event, the Downtown Sudbury Art Crawl committee is hosting an art crawl during (and in partnership with) Up Here. That's on Saturday from 12-5 p.m.*
The 14 venues on the tour, include:
- Art Gallery of Sudbury, 251 John St.;
- Laughing Buddha, 194 Elgin St.;
- Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario, 174 Elgin St.;
- Monique Legault Studio, 172 Elgin St.;
- Artists on Elgin, 168 Elgin St.;
- Sudbury Paint and Custom Framing Co., 164 Elgin St.;
- Myths and Mirrors, 139 Durham St. (exterior wall);
- Wilkinson Building, 122 Durham St.;
- Speakeasy, 113 Durham St.;
- Kuppajo Espresso Bar, 109 Larch St.;
- Eat Local Sudbury, 176 Larch St.;
- Open Studio, 93 Cedar St., unit 303;
- It's a Mona Lisa Thing, 54 Elgin, unit 5; and
- Fromagerie Elgin, 80 Elgin St.
The Downtown Sudbury Art Crawl is a grassroots, pedestrian friendly cultural experience for the city of Greater Sudbury in and around the downtown core. It celebrates visual and other art forms, including literary and musical arts. Organizers seek to create opportunities for artists to exhibit, sell, exchange ideas and to raise awareness about their creative processes. Check them out on Facebook.
*An earlier version of this story included some incorrect information regarding the art crawl and interactive exhibits.
