This past Sunday was Arts Collective's First Annual Fall Festival. Since the spring, I've been working with my friend Andrew Ockenden on creating a stronger, more inclusive artistic community on campus. Our goal is to form a network of musicians, visual artists, and writers. We had a great turnout for our general interest meeting last semester- ideas were pouring out of everyone there and we generated a lot of great ideas for the 07-08 school year. Fall Festival was our baby- the perfect way to introduce Arts Collective to HWS.

Despite the rain on Sunday, the event was wildly successful! Vendors came from all over upstate New York: Dirty Ass Soaps (a member of Utica's infamous Indie Garage Sale), Indie Pendents, Ithaca's Glass, Que Colores, and Red Jacket Orchards. Student bands played throughout the day: Brad Hester & Mike Lashomb of hsem, Ben Mason with some impromptu tunes, and Danielle Devito. Pete and J of NYC (www.peteandj.com) topped off the festival with an outstanding performance. They played for over an hour, making chitchat with the audience and ending with a birthday shout-out for Andrew.

We were lucky enough to have Sal Zalaveta design and execute a mock-graffiti wall. He painted three gigantic boards of plywood "NYC construction" blue and stenciled "POST NO BILLS" on them to simulate the construction areas in NYC. Sal topped off the walls with a stencil of his friend Reggie dancing. We're hoping to set up the boards outside of Scandling Center one day this week to get some more paint on them!

I'm excited about the future of Arts Collective. This fall we have plans for a Techno/GraphArt Dance Party, a WEOS sponsored Art Gallery, and large-scale art instillations. Our first meeting of the year is Tuesday September 25th, wish me luck!

Pete and J

Andrew and Me

The graffiti artists

One of our lovely vendors

Laura Valdmanis and Barry Samaha representing Red Jacket