The New Art Festival June 10 and 11

By Bhat Boy
With the beginning of summer, a mirage appears in the park below Bank Street. The sound of pipes and guitars will lure you down the steps into a medieval festival of tents. It will be full of things you never imagined existed. The smell of grass and children’s laughter will accompany you through The New Art Festival, a tradition held with the arrival of each new summer. Dogs are welcome.
Take a merry trip around the park. Get lost. We feature over 150 artists, some exhibiting for the first time. We have new talent, old talent; the only thing we don’t have is no talent. We create everything you couldn’t imagine. Sample Kerry Duffy’s sandwiches from the Life of Pie, eat at Sulu Wok, listen to some music and talk to your neighbours. Do it all at the same time.

One of the stars of the New Art Festival is Nicole Allen. When she exhibited for the first time in 2011, she was nervous about sharing her work with the public. Her experiences that first weekend left her exhausted but helped her launch herself forward into her own art career.
“I now find that exhibiting my work feeds my artistic process as I can see how people respond and interact with my paintings,” says Nicole. “The feedback from attendants and artists has become invaluable and the energy surrounding TNAF has always inspired me artistically.”
She will be showing a new collection of floral-inspired paintings that blend graphic pattern with loose gestural brushwork. Some of the paintings are large in scale, but she has created small works too.
For those of you that have seen Nicole at the festival before, she also promises to have some “cheeky bird” paintings. “It is at TNAF where I first exhibited a few small bird paintings. Little did I know that there were so many bird-loving people in Ottawa! I started bringing more birds every year but hanging a large collection of small canvases was tricky until I salvaged an old wooden door from my neighbour’s trash – the “bird board” was born.”
I will not call Nicole Allen old talent, but, I will agree that I, Bhat Boy, am really old talent. I have been in the park every year since 1993, and this year I have created a special series of paintings for the occasion – treehouse paintings. But more than just treehouses, they are cities suspended above the landscape. The dream of recreating everything as a treehouse is a new lens for me see the world through. These new paintings seem instantly iconic of my work. I can never get enough of getting excited about new paintings.
I founded the festival in 1993. At that time, I had just graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design and wanted to create a platform for emerging artists. A space to do business beyond the shiny glass windows of the galleries that would not have me. A place to meet and exchange ideas with other artists. It turned out that artists everywhere needed the same things that I needed, and my homegrown experiment in Art in the Park was a fabulous success.
I had no idea the festival would create such a lasting legacy. As with all great ideas, Art in the Park took on a life of its own. It outgrew me and went on to become The New Art Festival. I created it, but it grew to meet the needs of a new generation in a new millennium.
For more than a decade, I had not been involved with running the festival, but the pandemic took a heavy toll on the old team. I am part of a new team carrying the festival forward into the future. I hope we see you there, helping another generation bridge the divide.
For more information: www.newartfestival.ca
Bhat Boy is a noted Glebe artist and a founder of The New Art Festival.
The New Art Festival
June 10 and 11, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
Central Park, Bank Street
at Patterson Avenue
Wild at Heart, part of Nicole Allen’s explosive floral series.
photo: The Notley Creative
The Glebe Tree, by Bhat Boy photo: Bhat Boy