Stickfest 2015

On Saturday we welcomed friends old and new to the annual Festival of the Stick, our much-loved celebration of the humble and mighty stick. This year's featured activity was Kubb, a game we picked up in Sweden a few months ago.

The game involves two teams throwing sticks at each other's "kubbs" - blocks of wood. It looks pretty simplistic but it's quite challenging and extremely fun! Kubb was a big hit with our residents over the summer, so we knew it would be the perfect activity to celebrate Stickfest.

We also had our ever-popular stick-painting activity. We love seeing kids mucking around with paint. Get 'em hooked while they're young, I say!

But the heart of Stickfest is our pop-up Stick Museum. 

Visitors are always delighted to discover that yes, there really are a lot of different sticks in the world, and that we have gone to great (ridiculous?) lengths collecting specimens from around the world and displaying them in informative and creative ways.

We had some fantastick new donations to the museum, like this Anarchistick from Christine Renaud:

A bundle of Artisticks from Rick Zimmerman: 

And this spectacularly bug-carved stick from Joan McBride:

Stickfest is always a great time; maybe next year you'll join us? Our friend Ember will tell you what to do:

Making Art With Seniors

Over the course of a year and a half, I did monthly art workshops at a local seniors' home. Having no previous experience working with seniors, it was a pretty big learning curve. I had to design activities that could be completed in 1-1.5 hours, with little money for materials; sometimes there were three participants, other times there were up to 15. The levels of ability were extremely mixed, from fairly keen and competent to those who physically struggled to hold a paintbrush, or were unable to focus on any given task. I'd never worked with people with Alzheimers or dementia, and at first it was a bit intimidating. But over the course of these workshops I really got to know some of these seniors, and I enjoyed hanging out with them and trying to offer them interesting experiences. 

The first time I went to the home, my husband Milé came with me. I was in the throes of organizing the first Firelight Lantern Festival, so of course we made a lantern! I made the structure in advance, and the group helped cover it with tissue paper. I think it turned out pretty great!

Sticking with the theme of "do what you know," the next project we did was a scarecrow. I've helped make a lot of these at Small Pond's annual Scarecrow Festival. I brought a bunch of clothes that the seniors could choose from, and they helped stuff the guy full of straw. They named him Marcel, and I delighted them with spinning him around like a dance partner. Fun!

One of our other annual festivals is Stickfest, and I always have a collection of big beautiful beach sticks on hand. The seniors each painted one or two sticks; I whisked the sticks away and strung them into this mobile before returning it to the home.

We did two large-ish paint chip collages, inspired by a substantial donation of paint chips!

These collages were some of my favourite projects, as they easily accommodated a large group of people and a wide range of abilities. I used corrugated plastic for the base.

For Halloween we made these lanterns from mason jars. This was a bit tricky for those with motor skill issues and required quite a bit of assistance from me and the staff. Tutorial here.

We did a few different drawing projects. I love the brightness of chalk pastels.

For Easter I made these salt-dough egg ornaments; I made my own cookie cutter from a tin can. When they came out of the oven they looked an awful lot like cookies, so I gave them a bright base coat before giving them out to the seniors for them to decorate.

Someone still tried to eat one. Whoops...

Our last project was a papier-mâché sculpture called The Wishing Tree, inspired by the story of a very special tree in Prince Edward County. I brought in the foundation of the sculpture, made from cardboard and masking tape, and over the course of three sessions we applied the papier-mâché, painted it, affixed the leaves and made a collage base from those very useful paint chips.

What I will remember most from these workshops were the conversations we had; about life and about art. There was one woman who was a somewhat reluctant participant in some of these workshops; reluctant because she had been a professional artist in her day, and she thought these projects were perhaps beneath her. She showed me some of her work, and when she did participate she made great contributions. I will never forget how one day she looked at me and said, "You remind me so much of myself." Maybe one day I'll be in her place, and an artist will come to visit...

A Sticky Story

This past Saturday I was at Sandbanks New Waves music festival, providing some children's programming. Between painting murals and helping make puppets, I took a quick break to go to the beach. You see, our annual Festival of the Stick was on Sunday, and I thought we could use a few more sticks. The beach is a great source for sun-bleached, bark-stripped sticks, and within a couple of minutes, I'd loaded up my arms with a bounty. I headed towards the parking lot, taking a shortcut along a narrow path through the sand dunes. I was almost there, when lo and behold, two policemen were walking straight towards me. I smiled as they approached; I knew they were looking for people doing less-than-legal things away from the main festival site. But I was not to get off so easily. "You're not supposed to take sticks from a provincial park" one of them said, "It's part of the ecosystem." Uh, whoops. "Do you want me to put them back?" I asked, still smiling. "No, you can just throw them in the bushes here." I did as I was told, but I held out the other treasure I'd found. "Am I allowed to keep this?" I asked.

My treasure

The cop admired my find, speculating that the jawbone was probably from a deer. "We'll pretend we didn't see you with that," he said, and we went in our separate directions. 

Thankfully, when Sunday rolled around we weren't faced with a stick shortage, because those who attended Stickfest were well aware of the cost of admission: one stick. Two by two and four by four, they pulled in to Small Pond, got out of their cars and climbed off their bikes, approaching the Museum of the Stick with sticks in hand.

Wood carving from Ghana depicting women making Fufu with... big sticks 

We had lots of new acquisitions to the Stick Museum this year, including many sticks in our International Collection. I wonder how many were acquired in less-than-legal means...

Young and old enjoyed perusing the museum, and enjoying the classic Stickfest activities of stick painting, and stick-snack eating. Dogs frolicked with sticks, kids ran back and forth to the silo, and people had the opportunity to try out stilt-walking.

It was a glorious day, filled with friends, laughter, and lots and lots of sticks. Our museum will be up for the next few weeks; if you'd like to check it out, just get in touch. We always welcome donations to our permanent collection if you've got a special stick that needs a home. Until next year, remember to stick with love...

- Martin Luther King Jr.