Artrageous Outrageous
Sara Cox of Sarafish Yoga with young volunteers mirroring her moves.
Nothing quite compares to the Dare County Arts Council’s annual Artrageous celebration of the arts in Dare County. With around 2100 kids and parents attending the Saturday event and over 125 volunteers with 53 tables of crafts and lots of artists on hand, nothing in my experience quite matches it and I suspect there’s very few people who have ever seen anything like it.
“Our theme is art is community and a lot of the community turned out to support the arts,” DCAC president Ginny Flowers said.
Held at Rec Park in Kill Devil Hills Artrageous defines what is meant by family friendly. Yes, the face painting, the bead stringing, the stained glass making are geared toward kids but they are the type of hands on activities that involve parents and kids.
There were some activities that parents and kids could do together. The stained glass table had children of all ages seated and learning. The fish print table, manned—or womanned in this case—by DCAC volunteer of the year Niki Taylor, was creating works of art based on the Japanese fish printing method, Gyotaku, although participants were using wooden fish instead of live ones.
Great art and a budding football star still in pads.
The weather certainly contributed to the record turnout a the 26th Annual Artrageous. With bright sunshine, a light breeze and temperatures a perfect autumn day 65 degrees, it would be hard to imagine better conditions. That was a far cry from what confronted the DCAC on the September 26, original date for the event, when howling northeast winds and the threat of rain forced a postponement to the last Saturday in October—which happened to be Halloween this year.
Located next to the football field, booths were filled with boys, and a few girls, still wearing pads trying their hand at various forms of art or getting their face painted. The young athletes, though, were just one part of a complete day—a day of art, creativity and most importantly . . . “The kids had a blast. Look at all these happy children,” Ginny said and smiled.
