The Queen West Art Crawl (QWAC) will take place along Queen West between Bathurst and Roncesvalles September 14-16. The hub of the event is the Outdoor Art Show and Sale in Trinity Bellwoods Park, featuring 250 of Canada’s most innovative established and emerging artists.
-QWAC kicks off with an opening night gala Friday, September 14 at the Drake Hotel’s Underground. Guests will have the opportunity to mingle over cocktails, and bid on works of art donated by many of the artists featured over the weekend in the show.
-The Parkdale Nightcrawl has new programming this year: Performances at The Cadillac Lounge by Dave Bidini and the bidiniband starting at 8pm, 100 Paintings; 5 artists will be painting 100 canvases starting at 4pm at The Rhino to be sold on the spot with partial proceeds going to QWAC. Attendees can also participate by painting their own canvas as well. Also Quinn West is hosting a devious hairdresser confessional where guests can enjoy a Dirty Hairy or Hair Raiser made with TAG vodka then, from the comfort of a stylist’s chair spill their dirty secrets on one of the pre-printed cards and to be added to the wall of shame/blame.
-Etsy will be hosting a studio at the Outdoor Show and Sale where QWAC attendees can engage in creating art.
-QWAC’s Performance Zone will include local performers from Parkdale and West Queen West. Attendees can enjoy everything from Jazz, Rock, Classical, Electro pop to Acoustic punk, and there’s even musical entertainment for the kiddies.
-Arts for Children and Youth are hosting the KidsZone this year. This new collaborative venture includes various interactive activities for the family. Kidszone start off with a gigantic community streamer art project and a face painting station on both Saturday, September 15 to Sunday, September 16, from 12pm – 5pm. The AFCY’s community streamer art project is called Collaboration Massive, inspired by traditional Kente Cloth. Hand dyed paper-cloth streamers will be decorated, collaged and woven into a mural-sized artwork. Young artists will be invited to draw with markers, oil pastels, crayons and coloured pencils and use shaped stencils, sponges and fun scrap papers to make their mark on the community streamers. Also, children and youth are invited to have their face painted in a park-inspired design such as a bird, butterfly, bee, flower or squirrel at the Face Painting station.
-Also, new this year, QWAC is offering attendees a variety of food to choose from with ten on site food vendors and six food trucks offering delicious snacks and entrees ranging from desserts to gourmet dinners.
Since it’s inception by Artscape in 2003, and conceived as a one‐day outdoor art show, the Queen
West Art Crawl (QWAC) is now a charitable corporation that drives a number of initiatives publicly benefiting artists and residents of Toronto, including a three‐day multidisciplinary arts event stretching along Queen Street West from Roncesvalles Avenue to Bathurst Street.
Part of the performances you will be able to enjoy during QWAC:
Saturday September 15
Space Chums- 12:00pm
Tony Quarrington- 1:00pm
Meher Steinberg-2:00pm
Teenage X-3:00pm
The Goodtimes-4:00pm
Fighter/lLover -5:00pm
Sunday September 16
Sinfonia Toronto-12:00pm
Processor-1:00pm
Caley Kelly-2:00pm
Ronley Teper and the Lipliners-3:00pm
Freeman Dre and the Kitchen Party-4:00pm
Lemon Bucket Arkestra-5:00pm
Trinity Bellwoods Park will be buzzing with activity and as a backdrop to the festivities the Performance Zone will offer music for everyone to enjoy.
For more information www.queenwestartcrawl.com
