GumptionFest returns, bigger and bolder

Photo courtesy of Shane DeLong, photo illustration by Christopher Fox Graham

GumptionFest returns, bigger and bolder

By Christopher Fox Graham
©LARSON NEWSPAPERS
______________________________ SEDONA, ARIZ.: If at first you don't succeed, try, try again, the saying goes. However, if at first you succeed beyond your wildest expectations, do it again, bigger and better. GumptionFest is back.
The second annual arts festival is gearing up for the main event on Saturday, June 2, with a series of smaller events around Sedona in March, April and May. The festival organizers have begun the search for artists, sponsors, vendors and volunteers.
Last year's GumptionFest was a grassroots, street festival effort bankrolled on a shoestring budget. The goal was to provide a one-day experience showcasing the best of the amateur, young, underground and under-the-radar artists that call the Verde Valley home.
It was a risky experiment in community involvement. No artists were paid to appear, they were asked simply to show up and share.
What the festival promoters proposed seemed a monumental task ripe for utter chaos: simultaneously operate five venues along a busy West Sedona streets, have more than 100 artists, 40 bands and 40 solo musicians perform from noon to 2 a.m. — and do it for free.
Would the artists and bands have the gumption to put themselves on the line?
More importantly, would there be a crowd?
Artists donated their time, local business owners donated their goods and venues and more than 1,200 Sedona residents and visitors packed the event.
"Oak Creek Brewery has supported all sort of artistic endeavors in the 12 years we've been here," said Fred Kraus, owner of the brewery. "So when GumptionFest came along, we jumped at providing a space.
"It married together people from the community and local artists," Kraus said. "A lot of entry-level musicians who were doing their thing at home to more well-known folks."
The goal of the second annual GumptionFest, according to Executive Director Dylan Jung, is to capitalize on the buzz produced from last year's event to bring in more artists, participants, spectators, and area businesses to celebrate Sedona's art community.
"We're trying to establish GumptionFest as an entity for years to come, to put on events around town in partnership with local venues, other arts organizations and the Sedona Cultural Park, which should be up and running again in the next few years," Jung said.
To prepare both the artists and the community, there will be a series of smaller events with organizations such as the Sedona Arts Center and local venues, such as The Well Red Coyote bookstore.
The goal is to help build the "artistic support system" that underlined the purpose of the inaugural event.
Education events will also be added to the festival, such as dance classes at Light Vibe Dance Studio, yoga classes at Devi Yoga, lectures on art topics from students at Northern Arizona University.
Films this year will include students from the Zaki Gordon Institute for Independent Filmmaking, who screened more than a dozen short films last year. The festival organizers also hope to work with the Sedona International Film Festival & Workshop and No Festival Required, from Phoenix, which draws student and short films from around the country.
The film-screening portion of the festival will also include a wine tasting from local wineries paired with cheeses from New Frontiers Natural Marketplace.
The Well Red Coyote will also invite local authors for booksignings, according to owner Joe Neri.
Bands already booked range from solo guitarists like Richard Salem and Keith Martini, to Sedona bands such as Yin Yang & Zen Some, the Tarantulas and the Doodles and regional bands like Carnuba, from Prescott, and Showbot, a comedic band from Flagstaff.
One of last year's unforeseen complications was coordinating 80 musical groups between the stages at Oak Creek Brewery, Creative Flooring and Devi Yoga.
The remedy, according to Jung, is that other venues around Sedona that couldn't participate on the day of the festival due to their locations will have supporting performances leading up to GumptionFest culminating in slew of performances on the night of Friday, June 1.
Painters, sculptors, visual artists and photographers will have art on display, some of which will be for sale through a silent auction.
The festival promoters will also be encouraging schools to participate, from a class painting a mural for display at the festival, to teachers encouraging individual students to exhibit their work, according to Jung.
"We want to get more of the youth involved," he said.
There will be a number of other performance events, ranging from modern dance, stand-up comedy, improv, belly dancing, theatre, fire dancing and a performance poetry reading open to the public.
However, all the art forms will cross over.
"You never know where else a poet might show up, such as when Aaron Johnson did a slam poem between bands at the brewery," Jung said.
To participate, volunteer, or contribute as a sponsor for the preliminary events or the festival itself, contact Jung at 202-8144 or e-mail to GumptionFest@yahoo.com. For more information, visit www.MySpace.com/GumptionFest.

Sedona Underground is published every Friday in The Scene. To comment or suggest an artist, contact Christopher Fox Graham at 282-7795, Ext. 126, or e-mail to cgraham@larsonnewspapers.com.

Poetry event gathers talent from across the region

By Christopher Fox Graham
Sedona Red Rock News

Before the invention of musical instruments, people would gather to tell stories.
Once a month in Jerome, a group of 30 to 50 people gather at the Anderson–Mandette Art Gallery to listen to spoken word.
At each Poetry Tonight! event, three featured poets read 20 to 30 minutes of their own work, followed by a one–poem open mic.
"I love the community aspect of it," said Robin John Anderson, one of the gallery's owners. "It's a chance to hear poets put out a body of work."
Members of the audience are encouraged to sign up and read their work. The night's host rotates each month, letting a different member of the poetry community invite the featured poets, Anderson said. The rotation adds a diversity of voices.
Anderson, and his wife, Margo Mandette, have been holding a poetry reading for about three years at their gallery, in the old Mingus Union High School building. He estimates that roughly a hundred poets have featured at the event.
The featuring poets have come from all over Arizona and some from around the country. Recently, features have included poets from Houston and Boston.
"This was the first time, but it won't be the last," said David Ward about attending the event. Ward, of Sedona, is a senior at Sedona Red Rock High School and was one of Friday's featured poets.
Ward started writing in seventh grade, but became more interested in it during his freshman year of high school, he said, Ward has honed his work at the Poetry Salon, a weekly poetry workshop roundtable that has been gathering at Ravenheart Coffee Wednesday nights in West Sedona for over four years. Ward is now the author of his first chapbook, "Death of the Full Moon."
"When I started going to the Salon, I never thought I would have my own chapbook," Ward said. "I didn't even know what a chapbook was."
A chapbook is an inexpensive, self–published book. While some poets manufacture their own chapbooks at photocopy centers, many, like Ward's, are bankrolled by friends or patrons and sent to professional photocopy and graphic design companies.
The teacher that pushed Ward further into spoken word and poetry when he was in seventh grade was Karyl Goldsmith, of Sedona. She was the second poet to feature on Friday and teaches senior literature and advancement placement at Sedona Red Rock High School. Some of her students, including her daughter, Hannah, a junior at SRRHS, were in the crowd.
Though Goldsmith has been writing since she was a high school student, she said, this was one of her first chances to turn page poetry in to spoken word.
"This is one of the most exciting things to happen to poetry since – ever," Goldsmith said.
"Poetry used to be dead white men," she continued, "sometimes it still is. But now it's alive."
Poetry Tonight! and the Poetry Salon are two poetry and spoken word programs in Northern Arizona sponsored by the NORAZ Poets, a formal organization of poetry communities in Prescott, the Verde Valley, Flagstaff and smaller towns throughout Northern Arizona. The group, soon to be a nonprofit, promotes poetry, shares featured poets and promotional costs, runs a Web site, http://norazpoets.org, and toll–free hot line, listing poetry events across
Northern Arizona.
"Without NORAZ, poetry in Northern Arizona would not be where it is today," Ward said. "The poetry scene in Sedona is exploding. "NORAZ came it at the right time and we're riding that wave."
Poets who discover one poetry event Northern Arizona can be quickly connected through the Web site and word–of–mouth network to other events which offer more avenues, such as the open mic or the salon workshop, with which poets can share and improve their work and help other poets do the same.
Six poets from around the Verde Valley, and the events host, Rebekah Crisp, of Sedona, read at the open mic.
Eric Brunet, of Flagstaff, was the third and final feature of Friday's event. Brunet, 34, lived in Tucson of a year and half before moving to Flagstaff.
Brunet published his first book, "Flee Now, Young Dog," in 1991 and is working on the manuscript for his second, "Ukulele Aikido."
Friday's event was his "first taste of the scene," he said, but he plans to get active. He was active in Tucson's poetry scene and is glad to see a scene in Northern Arizona.
"I'm jumping back into the water with both feet."
To attend 928–634–3438.
Contact Christopher Fox Graham