Category: Local Events

Juan de Fuca Festival of the Arts

There’s nothing like live music. There are a number of venues for it around the Olympic Peninsula, and other events that feature terrific performers, too. But the Juan de Fuca Festival is one of our favorites and the one we budget for. Musicians come from far and wide and there is a great diversity of musical styles. Mary Flower, above, is a guitarist and blues singer who has placed twice in the top three in the National Fingerpicking Championship, the only woman to do so.

Paul Chasman, above, accompanied Mary Flower on Saturday and also performed on Monday. He is a well known West Coast guitarist.

The Portland Cello Project performs nontraditional and classical music – a great mashup of styles, wonderfully interpreted. They give a whole new twist to what a cello can do. One original piece they played was entitled “Robin Hood Changes the Oil.” Great fun!

Sequimarimba!

Last weekend was the 19th annual Juan de Fuca Festival of the Arts in Port Angeles. It’s a weekend full of live music and more. There’s free entertainment outside and dozens of live acts inside for paying customers. Sequimarimba played outside on Saturday.

Sequimarimba plays music largely from the Shona culture of Zimbabwe and the group has played together for decades. It was a perfect day for an outdoor performance and marimba music is upbeat and totally addictive. Click here for a link to a video of part of the performance I saw.

Smile of the week

This man from Sierra Leone was making and selling market baskets at the Arts and Crafts Fair last Saturday. The baskets were gorgeous and finely woven. We talked while I took his picture and his hands didn’t stop working for a moment. His smile was enough to brighten anyone’s day.

I have a leather handled African basket of this sort and love it. Beautiful, durable, and well made.

More rides from the land of vintage

You know you’ve entered an, uhm, interesting stage in your life when cars you remember seeing as a child are called “vintage” or “collectors.” I think we had one of these parked in front of our house when I was very young. But it was never, ever this clean.

I don’t remember what the color of this Chevy was called, but it was oh so popular for what seemed like a long, long time. Or maybe it was just because there were a lot of them on the road.

The Sequim Irrigation Festival will continue this coming weekend with all manner of events. Click here to learn more about the festival and what is planned.

For the boys: more cars

Here’s a Model T that was on display next to the Arts and Crafts Fair on Saturday. The cars represent the Sequim Valley Car Club which gives bragging rights to owners of vintage cars 25 years or older. Though they display their cars at events, they bill themselves as primarily a touring club and you can, from time to time, see groups of these gorgeous vehicles motoring around the Olympic Peninsula. By the looks of them I suspect the gents lined up on the other side of this car represent the club.

Here’s an Oldsmobile. It has a windshield unlike any I’ve seen before.

My guess is that cars of this sort aren’t parked and forgotten in the driveway.

Take me for a ride in your car car

The 117th annual Sequim Irrigation Festival has begun. It’s Washington State’s longest continual festival and celebrates the completion of the irrigation ditches that made agriculture possible in the Dungeness Valley. The very first festival drew picnicing revelers by horseback and wagon from near and far. They had such a good time they decided to keep having it. These days the event runs two weekends and started this weekend with an art walk, Arts and Crafts Fair, and a Kids Day and Family Picnic, among other things. The beautifully restored cars above were parked next to the Arts and Crafts Fair.

So in a setting like this guys will go, “Wow! A 19XX Ford!” and launch into car stories, talk about flathead V8s, cars they’ve owned, and stuff like that. But a guy wasn’t taking these pictures. I took pictures of the car jewelry.

I know. These are probably a big disappointment if you are of the boy persuasion. I’ll post a couple of car pictures tomorrow.

Washington Old Time Fiddlers Association, 2

The Washington Old Time Fiddlers Association (WOTFA) isn’t limited to fiddle musicians and they have jam sessions twice a month at the Sequim Prairie Grange Hall. In addition to the fiddle, banjo, bass and guitar above, musicians played bass, mandolins, harmonicas, piano and a concertina.

WOTFA began in 1965 with 10 members. There are now 1700 statewide. The organization is dedicated to preserving, promoting, and perpetuating the art of old time fiddling and the associated acoustic instruments’ arts and skills and music. They perform locally at retirement centers, nursing homes, the county fair, and other local events and donations from these performances support their youth scholarship program.