By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
Artists representing many genres will display their creativity Saturday and present a panoply of work, from song and dance to orchestral music, poetry and visual pieces, at the annual Original Artist Grind.
As the name suggests, the talent will be all original – no cover songs or re-hashed classic dances.
“This particular Grind, the Artist Grind, showcases original works of art, whether it be songwriting, dance, the written word – pretty much what we have lined up for this year,” co-producer Jeanne Stolberg told the Sentinel. “It’s all about people coming and showing their creations on the stage. And also we will have a small art exhibit in the lobby of the Performing Arts Center as well. So we’ll have performing arts and visual arts.”
Dessert also will be offered in the PAC lobby. The event begins at 7 p.m. Saturday, and entry costs $5. Tickets are for sale now at Old Harbor Books and will be sold at the door, also. The PAC venue is more spacious than the usual one at the Sheet’ka Kwaan Naa Kahidi, but Stolberg encourages arts enthusiasts to arrive early.
As in past Artist Grinds, producer and performer J Bradley said, he and Stolberg have worked hard to create art forms different from the usual lineup of entertainment at the monthly (approximately) family-friendly talent shows that brighten Sitka winters.
“Jeanne and I have kind of gone to lengths to get other kinds of artists,” Bradley said. “We’ve had poetry readers where we put them with a musician and then have those people pick images that we put up on the screen, because the idea is that at the Performing Arts Center, you can support a show better with more ideas.”
Along with his role in producing the show, he will perform with singer and guitarist Thanny Bean in “Tsunami Evacuation Plan.” Following the intermission, Bradley will perform in the Holland Tunnel Orchestra with Marshall Bovee, Dan Littlefield and Cody Russell.
“There was a significance to this show for me personally in that the Holland Tunnel Orchestra is a multimedia performance platform,” Bradley said. “As you know, I’m an entertainment designer and I use our performances as a place to try out different ideas that ultimately wound up in touring act shows and things like that.”
Bradley has been involved with the Original Artist Grind since 2010, and expressed gratitude to all those who have worked to make Saturday’s event come together.
Fiddlers entertain at the Monthly Grind in February at the Sheet’ka Kwaan Naa Kahidi. This month’s Original Artist Grind is scheduled for Saturday at the Performing Arts Center. (Sentinel Photo)
While Johnny Elliott has written music before, this will be the first time he’s performed it at such a formal and well-attended event.
“It’ll be the first on this type of scale,” Elliott said. “I actually write a bunch of different jingles and stuff, particularly at work. We have a community of staff and students over at Outer Coast (college) and occasionally we have end-of-year skits… Over the years I’ve written a bunch of music for that, rewriting the words of popular songs to be pertinent to whatever happened during that program.”
Elliott, who describes his musical appetite as “super eclectic and omnivorous,” will sing and play the keyboard, accompanied by his friend Zach Miller on clarinet and harmonica.
They will perform two of Elliott’s pieces: “One is a little bit, sort of like futuristic dystopian thing, and a little bit techno-y; the other one is very sort of folksy bluesy.”
“Certainly excitement and nervousness are two sides of the same coin, but I’m mostly just thrilled that this opportunity exists,” he said.
Another performer, Vern Culp, has been involved from the beginning. A singer and songwriter, he established the Arti Gras Festival, a forerunner of the Artist Grind, over a decade ago.
“Arti Gras started out as a music and art festival… that was organized by local people focused on local art. We didn’t bring anybody in from outside and it lasted for, I think, four years or so until the organizers ran out of steam, and so it morphed into the Artist Grind.”
Saturday will mark the first time he has performed since the start of the pandemic, and he’s looking forward to trying out two songs that will be on an album he’s making.
It’s important, he said, for local people to support local artists.
“Music in a community like Sitka is really, really, really important, and I think it’s very important for people to come out and support the musicians, because that’s about the only support we get,” he said.
Bradley hopes Sitkans will turn out to enjoy local art and support local artists.
“See your local friends and neighbors doing their best original work in an environment that best supports it and elevates it,” he said.
Other acts on the bill include singer Rhiannon Guevin with a preview of the musical Amelie, Losi Siulua reading poetry, and Dorothy Orbison, Dawn Georgia and Sarah Jordan as a flute trio that will play during the intermission.
That is part of the social aspect of the Artist Grind, Stolberg said. “We have a dessert component in this where people can bring homemade desserts and enter them into the contest and share them with their friends because the desserts are served at intermission.”
