Glenn McFarlane wins Arts Person of the Year

Congratulations to Glenn McFarlane, president of the Brampton Folk Club, for winning the City of Brampton Arts Person of the Year Award. Nominated previously, Glenn is president and a founding member of the Brampton Folk Club. The Club regularly hold concerts; various times of the year, they perform weekly during the evening at a local church, and weekly at the Rose Theatre's outdoor stage.

The Folk Club is perhaps best known for its Brampton Folk Festival, which ran for many years at Gage Park. The festival attracted audiences from around the province, and top performers from across the country, like Murray McLaughlin, Tanglefoot, and General Store. Unlike many of its large cousins, the event was perpetually free, meaning people not normally exposed to folk music could have a chance to appreciate it.

Visual Arts Brampton president Keith Moreau attended the event, held at the Rose Theatre. Keith was Arts Person in 1992. The event, themed to "Singin' in the Rain", included entertainment, the Corporate Support of the Arts Awards, and Harry Dale Literary Grant for Aspiring Writers. Among the people at Keith's table was a representative of Colony Ford, sponsor of the Art Gallery of Peel.

Keith actually designed the logo of the Brampton Folk Festival, and his son Nick designed the programme multiple years. One group compilation album featured Keith's coloured pencil artwork on the cover, the winner of a group-wide competition. McFarlane posed for the portrait sessions, in relation to the CD and event.

The Brampton Guardian has an article on the win as well.

Youth laison added to Arts Council

You've likely already read about her in The Brampton Guardian, but now at the Brampton Arts Council is Kelly Lewars, taking the newly created role of youth liason.

Among her roles, Kelly started blogging for the Arts Council in mid-July, about various events around town, and the city's art scene in general. Among her recent posts is one about the 3rd annual Communities in Bloom Downtown Street Festival, which Visual Arts Brampton participated in, upstairs.

Brampton Arts Council on Facebook

You can now receive the Brampton Arts Council on Facebook, by "Fan"-ing their page. Do so, and a link to their weekly newsflash will show up in your news feed.

Also, a reminder that Visual Arts Brampton is on Facebook, and we regularly post the "best of" our blog and Twitter feed on the page. Again, this information appears on your news feed.

Last day for flower art show is Monday

Every year since 2002, Visual Arts Brampton has presented a display of floral art at the City Hall Atrium gallery space. This year's Floral Images of Flower City is coming to an end on Monday afternoon, so if you want to catch the creativity on display, you have until 4:40 pm to do so.

As with recent years, the exhibit was widely viewed by visitors to the Brampton Horticultural Society's flower competition, the day of the Flower City Parade, opening of the Farmers' Market, and Inzola pancake breakfast for the arts.

(Visual Arts Brampton brought Millie, the Brampton Arts Council mascot, to the Peel Heritage Complex's garage sale, to greet visitors.)

Millie meets Dora

This weekend, Visual Arts Brampton participated in the Recreation and Leisure Show. We gave kids Valentine's Day colouring cards, printed for us by the Shoppers World location of Staples. The display walls featured reproduced images of member works, and we had numerous inquiries.

The highlight of the day for most kids in the mall was meeting Dora the Explorer. Brampton Arts Council mascot and frequent Visual Arts Brampton event guest Millie Artbug met her at the end of the day, on her Centre Court stage. Thankfully, the lineup was only to Laura Secord at the time Millie got in line; for at least two of the three hours of the appearance, it stretched half the length of the mall, literally.

(Dora was to take photos with 300 kids minimum; considering many met her in batches, and she stayed on stage most of the day, it's more likely she met 600-800, at least.)

VAB now on Flickr

This is the address of VAB's new Flickr account. (see way down)

flickr.com/
photos/
55759550@N00/

Any event we hold or attend, we'll try and post photos to there. First off is pics from the 2006 Shoppers World Christmas Parade; we brought the Brampton Arts Council's Millie to the event.

To the left is a photo collage of that event, as seen on The Brampton News. Two articles about the event were published on the site...

Santa comes to Shoppers World Brampton

Photostory: Mall parade held to mark Santa's arrival