The momentum of last year’s first ArtWalk – a partnership with the City, Everett Integral Arts and local businesses – will not be stopped by COVID-19 in 2020, said Karyn Alzayer – the ArtWalk director.
Alzayer said this week that the Walk is on and will start on Oct. 3 and run through Nov. 6, but there will be no big kick-off or hoopla accompanying the art – which will be in 20 of the City’s parks.
“It is for sure on, but we had to re-invent the wheel with it this year,” said Alzayer. “We won’t be going with our host business partners this year, not because we didn’t want to support businesses, but because we didn’t want to draw more traffic to places and make them unsafe…So, we’re going to take people on a socially-distant walk to explore all the parks of Everett.”
Alzayer said they have just concluded submissions and she expects to have one piece of art hanging in 20 of the parks, and perhaps more pieces in some of the bigger parks is submissions allow. She said they will print replicas of each piece and weatherize them so they can be affixed to a place in each park. Then, there will be a QR code next to the piece of art explaining what the piece is about and a bio of the artist – which will come up on one’s phone.
So far, she said they had an equal number of returning artists to new artists compared to last year – and there are Everett residents and residents from surrounding communities as well.
She said it actually makes a lot of sense to feature the art in the parks, many of which have been recently refurbished and look great.
“You really have to explore to find some of them,” she said. “They are really fabulous parks and the City has been working hard to improve the parks and most of them are better and have a great face to them. It makes sense to feature them with the art.”
Alzayer said they picked October because it seemed like a time when people might be able to still get outside, and things might have settled down from the start of school and the end of summer.
“We thought October because we didn’t want to do it in the heat of the summer, and September will be difficult because of school starting,” she said.
The ArtWalk is free to participate in and is supported in part by a grant from the Everett Cultural Council and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.