Local artists and crafters return for 2016 festival.
Local arts and crafts are once again part of the Shivering Songs festival experience. This year’s edition of the festival includes The Shivering Songs Handmade Market, which will run January 23, 2016 from 11 a.m. – 3 p.m. at Wilmot United Church.
“The timing of Shivering Songs has always been important,” said local artist Maggie Estey, who has been working to organise this year’s market event. “It’s always clearly been about getting people out of their homes and together and appreciating good music during the darkest part of the winter. Arts and crafts need that boost this time of year too. Events like this help motivate at least some of us to create stuff to show when we maybe don’t feel like it. Maybe because we get a little sad in the winter, maybe because we worked ourselves to death during the holidays.”
This year’s event will feature a wide range of New Brunswick artists and their work including Aboriginal art and craft, sculpture, jewelry, handcrafted soap, knitwear, printmaking, vintage and handmade clothing, recycled textiles, and a lot more.
A similar event was included as part of the festival’s 2014 programming.
“The Shivering Songs Handmade Market owes a lot to The Big To-Do, which was the creative market held as part of Shivering Songs 2014,” said Estey. “I participated as a vendor back then, selling prints of my ink drawings, and Tanya Duffy had the role that I’m performing this year. Tanya did a really wonderful job, and the proof is in the fact people have expressed a lot of enthusiasm for the return of this feature of Shivering Songs.”
Tanya Duffy is an award-winning graphic designer and a founding member of Sixty-Five York, a collaborative creative studio in downtown Fredericton. She credits her friends and colleagues for developing the initial idea that grew into 2014’s, The Big To-Do.
“Six friends got together over dinner to discuss plans for a creative market at Shivering Songs,” said Duffy. “We split up tasks, from sourcing artists to decorating the church basement and vendor tables. We focused on what we thought were the ‘hidden gems’ of New Brunswick. The craftspeople and artists who we knew were doing very cool things but weren’t the usual participants at local fairs. We had really great vendors and a huge amount of people who showed up to check them out.”
This year’s event will welcome a few of the artists involved in the past as well as several newcomers to the festival.
“I’m really pumped to be helping to facilitate it this time around,” said Estey, who also manages the popular Fredericton art gallery Ingrid Mueller Art+Concepts, “because I feel like it’s important work and because it’s been a great opportunity to work with artists I haven’t even heard of before, which I thought was impossible in this region. I put out a call through Art + Concepts and via the Facebook Event and the response, especially from new and exciting artisans, has been really great.”
Shivering Songs Handmade Market | January 23, 2016 | Wilmot United Church | 11 a.m. – 3 p.m. | View Event page for more full details | $2
For full festival information, please visit www.shiveringsongs.com
