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The festival is more than just a painting competition
Artists at this year’s Toledo Fringe Fest will hand over their finished paintings knowing most will be sawed in half.
It’s part of Art Mayhem, a painting competition returning to the Collingwood Arts Center. The works go head-to-head before most are cut apart, wired back together and returned to the artists.
The annual festival returns Sept. 26 from 6 to 10pm at 2413 Collingwood Blvd., with performances, art installations and vendors spread throughout the building.
Lexi Hayman-Staples, the center’s executive director, said Art Mayhem participants will work with a 16-by-20-inch canvas board, five brushes and five colors.
The center’s artist registration page says painters will have five hours to work: three before the festival and two during it. Audience voting follows. Visitors can watch them paint in the main theater’s balcony, according to Hayman-Staples.
Afterward, artists can take their pieces home or display and sell them through the center’s Weird Store.
“It’s a really fun way to experiment with art and the permanence of creation,” Hayman-Staples said.
The festival’s announced lineup includes comedians, aerialists, burlesque dancers and bondage artists. Hayman-Staples said visitors will also find live mural painting, vendors selling oddities and the Weird Store open for browsing.
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Moving through the building is part of the experience. Performances and installations occupy different rooms, giving visitors a reason to keep exploring after they finish watching one act.
“We intentionally make it new and different each year,” Hayman-Staples said. “You’re never going to come to the same thing twice.”
What changes depends on the artists who want to participate. Organizers put out a call for artists and some who had taken part before contacted the center about returning. Hayman-Staples said the artists’ interests help determine the performances, installations and rooms visitors will encounter.
At one earlier festival, visitors sat at a diner table and were served real coffee while waffles cooked in the hallway. The waffles brought to the table, however, were made of cardboard. Hayman-Staples remembered the performance as one of her favorites, partly because she enjoyed watching people engage with it.
Other years have brought puppetry, pop-up dance parties and an improv room that encouraged visitors to participate. Hayman-Staples said the center started the festival several years ago to give unusual performance and visual art more room in Toledo.
“This is really just a home for weirdos,” Hayman-Staples said.
The festival’s audience has been less predictable. Hayman-Staples hopes about 150 people will attend this year and said turnout has been both higher and lower in the past.
“The attendance is as chaotic as the event,” she said.
She is considering making the festival free next year to encourage more people to try it, even if they only have time to stop in for half an hour.
This year, general admission is $5 and VIP admission is $10, Hayman-Staples said. Tickets are available through Eventbrite and the center plans to post the full schedule on its social media accounts. Hayman-Staples said the event is for adults 18 and older.
She recommends wearing walking shoes and allowing time to explore several spaces. The building is large and has many stairs, so visitors with accessibility needs should contact the center in advance at [email protected] to discuss available options.
For Hayman-Staples, the festival also gives people who don’t consider themselves artistic a chance to find something that interests them. A visitor might see a performance that speaks to them or leave wanting to try making something themselves.
“I think people who don’t view themselves as artistic are some of the people who love art the most,” she said.
