A festival that works to promote several local artists across many different mediums is back for its second year. KWFamous’ Art Hop will run on September 8 and 9.
“It’s a two-day art and music festival that celebrates the local talent from the tri-cities of Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge. And through this festival we have seven different unique experiences happening across the tri-cities,” said Emily Wassmansdorf, brand ambassador for KWFamous.
The festival will start on Friday with two concerts: an all-ages rooftop concert at 165 King St. N. and a 19+ after-party inside that will feature the electronic duo Moonbeam combined with the moving art of Ahmri Vandeborne that will interact with the music.
Saturday will have several free events, including Breaking Jam. This will run from 1-8 p.m. at Revive Karaoke in Waterloo and include instructions and a 3-v-3 battle with $600 to the winner and $300 to the runner-up.
Another free event is the “print-a-palooza,” at Gaukel Block in downtown Kitchener from 12-4 p.m. that will feature the work of 35 artists and a punk rock band. Graffiti artist Whos_One will paint a mural that attendees may be featured in. Also, from 12-4 p.m., the Waterloo Public Library will host “sculpted” displaying the work of 25 sculptures and live pottery demos by Wu Ceramics.
Finally, Saturday will close out the festival with the “pre-party” at Catalyst Commons and the final event in Cambridge featuring six installations and concerts on two different stages.
With so many unique events and art on display, KWFamous has collaborated with several local people to make the festival happen.
“We have a lot of really great collaborators in the community who support us. For example, the vendor market has a really experienced vendor who’s supporting us. We have a good co-production who’s helping us with a lot of our music acts. So because art and music and kind of community events are such a big part of KW we’re able to manage the challenges that come with running so many events by collaborating with those community partners,” Wassmansdorf said.
This year has a unique theme of outer space and aliens. This goes along with the motto of Art Hop to support “things that are wonderful and weird,” she said, adding the prompt of creating something to go along with this brought a lot of great work from the artists.
“We had a little bit of a space theme in one of our events last year, people enjoyed it so much, and we thought it was such a great jumping off point for artists to be able to have some of the art installations that you’ll see at our events. Just to think outside of the box and be extra creative and literally out of this world with their creations. It was just part of trying to think outside of the box and do something a little bit different than what other people might be doing in the area,” Wassmansdorf said.
“A lot of our artists really have really enjoyed that prompt and we think that the installations that they’re producing are going to be really exciting for people to see.”
More information can be found online at www.arthopkw.ca.
