The New Art Festival June 10 and 11

By Bhat Boy

With the beginning of summer, a mirage appears in the park below Bank Street. The sound of pipes and guitars will lure you down the steps into a medieval festival of tents. It will be full of things you never imagined existed. The smell of grass and children’s laughter will accompany you through The New Art Festival, a tradition held with the arrival of each new summer. Dogs are welcome. Take a merry trip around the park. Get lost. We feature over 150 artists, some exhibiting for the first time. We have new talent, old talent; the only thing we don’t have is no talent. We create everything you couldn’t imagine. Sample Kerry Duffy’s sandwiches from the Life of Pie, eat at Sulu Wok, listen to some music and talk to your neighbours. Do it all at the same time.

One of the stars of the New Art Festival is Nicole Allen. When she exhibited for the first time in 2011, she was nervous about sharing her work with the public. Her experiences that first weekend left her exhausted but helped her launch herself forward into her own art career.

“I now find that exhibiting my work feeds my artistic process as I can see how people respond and interact with my paintings,” says Nicole. “The feedback from attendants and artists has become invaluable and the energy surrounding TNAF has always inspired me artistically.”

She will be showing a new collection of floral-inspired paintings that blend graphic pattern with loose gestural brushwork. Some of the paintings are large in scale, but she has created small works too. For those of you that have seen Nicole at the festival before, she also promises to have some “cheeky bird” paintings. “It is at TNAF where I first exhibited a few small bird paintings. Little did I know that there were so many bird-loving people in Ottawa! I started bringing more birds every year but hanging a large collection of small canvases was tricky until I salvaged an old wooden door from my neighbour’s trash – the “bird board” was born.”

I will not call Nicole Allen old talent, but, I will agree that I, Bhat Boy, am really old talent. I have been in the park every year since 1993, and this