Green Box Arts Festival to offer 150 events in Colorado | Arts & Entertainment
Every summer, under the cool, green canopy of Green Mountain Falls, a two-week wonderland of arts experiences pops up.
Green Box Arts Festival will offer almost 150 events through July 12 in the tiny mountain town 20 minutes west from downtown Colorado Springs. Some activities are free, some are ticketed. Register online as many events sell out. Go to greenboxarts.org.
“All of us at Green Box believe if every small town in America had a festival like Green Box we’d be better off,” said Scott RC Levy, the festival’s executive director.
One of the first things you’ll notice, as you coast off the mountain highway and into town, are the sculptures and installations. The festival attracts world-renowned artists who deliver the goods every June, with installations that typically last into fall. This year is no exception. Famed installation artist Patrick Shearn, a Black Forest native who lives and operates his company, Poetic Kinetics, near where he grew up, will display one of his signature Skynet pieces, dazzling kinetic sculptures he drapes across cities.
His new 6,000-square-foot piece, “Off the Beaten Path,” contains 35,000 pieces of kite fabric and will hang over Gazebo Lake into October. It’s shimmering movement was inspired by the murmuration of birds and schools of fish effortlessly moving together as one unit.
“I’m interested in all these pieces emulating or amplifying nature,” Shearn told The Gazette last year. “Where you can see what the wind is doing as it wraps around a building and comes up against the artwork, and all of a sudden everything becomes a different scale. You’re aware of the symphonic motion of wind through an environment we’re not really present to when we’re walking down the street. It brings you into a different relationship with your environment and the universe.”
After commissioning Shearn, festival organizers found themselves curating the festival with an eye toward featuring Colorado artists. And though the majority are from the state, there are some national and international artists, as well.
Often, a New York City-based dance company is invited to perform and give master classes. This year, Colorado Ballet will provide afternoon and evening performances, a master class, educational workshops and an ArtDesk conversation with Colorado Ballet Artistic Director Gil Boggs.
In its 65th season, the company will bring 18 dancers from its main company to do several pieces from its repertoire: excerpts from “Sleeping Beauty”; three contemporary works, one of which is set to Lana Del Ray’s song “Young and Beautiful”; and a new 30-minute piece choreographed by Yoshihisa Arai, set to Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. It will make its world premiere in Green Mountain Falls.
The piece is inspired by Rachmaninoff, who didn’t compose for two years due to depression. After working with a psychiatrist, he was finally ready to compose again. The piano concerto was his first piece.
“I love his (Arai’s) style of choreography. It’s classically based but very contemporary,” Boggs said. “We’ve built a company that does classical ballet so well and the dancers are so adept at contemporary and modern works. Our diversity is what makes us so unique.”
This year’s festival also includes Lily Henley, a singer, songwriter and fiddle player who combines ancient Sephardic Jewish melodies with Americana folk music; Colorado Springs Youth Symphony; Icons performers doing Broadway tunes; Amir Amiri, from Tehran, Iran, who plays santur, a 72-string instrument dating from 500 BCE; and The Moth Project, a visual and musical tour of moths.
A free Fourth of July Block Party features Aerial Aura & the Badda Boom Brass Band, a New Orleans-style funk band, followed by a water lantern launch on Gazebo Lake.
Shearn’s work is one of four new artworks debuting at the festival. Colorado Springs abstract artist Sarah Wright’s new “Sunset Over Gazebo Lake” can be seen on Lake Street. Japanese artist and Green Box artist in residence Yasuaki Onishi’s “Stone on Boundary” and Chicago-based artist and Green Box artist in residence CoCo Ree Lemery’s “Whispering Roots,” a sound-responsive indoor forest, will be on display inside Lakeview Terrace.
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“Those two pieces were made over May,” Levy said. “Both resident artists were working in the building at the same time and found a way to have the works merge and segue together organically.”
In-between performances are a multitude of events, including ArtDesk Conversations, art and cooking classes, guided art walks, a screening of the 1964 musical “The Unsinkable Molly Brown,” Fourth of July pie contest, poetry reading, silent disco party, yoga and fitness classes, and shows in James Turrell’s Skyspace installation.
“It’s about this intimate experience we try to provide,” Levy said. “It’s not that we’re trying to have throngs of people show up. We want to make sure people who come have a variety of events and opportunities to be engaged in various forms of artistic expression.”
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