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Yesterday we were the proud representatives of the Sonoma County Book Festival as we partnered with artists in Occidental and Bayer Farm in Roseland to kickoff the ArtsSonoma ’10 Festival. This festival has a great concept, as evidenced by this snip from their website (http://www.artssonoma.com):
“ArtsSonoma encourages artists and arts organizations to go ‘outside of the box’ and stretch the imaginations of the public as to art, what it is and where it happens. It is our belief that art can happen anywhere, from a cattle yard to a symphony hall, in shop fronts and in theaters, in clubs and on the rocky ridges of Bodega Head. To that end we have tried to encourage, with some success, artists to try to do what they do where they don’t.”
Melissa Kelley of the Book Festival put together a great double-billing for us: We started the day in sunny Occidental near Howard’s Cafe, as author Barbara Quick read from her book “Vivaldi’s Virgin’s” accompanied by San Francisco Symphony violist Wayne Roden. This was terrific guerrilla-theater stuff as we gave away hundreds of books while folks enjoyed an immersive classical experience – outdoors! At noon we raced off to a much warmer Bayer Farm, the community garden in the middle of Roseland that offers low-income urban families the opportunity to grow their own fruits and vegetables. More than a hundred adults and young children had gathered to see the charming antics of Carnival of Chaos. It was a very funny, and thrilling, show and afterward we had the privilege of sending the kids away with armloads of books, in both English and Spanish.
Special thanks to Jeremy Young, of Young Massage, who loaned us his truck to tow the bookmobile at the last minute – the usual steed is in the shop! And to Carrie Hess, who worked really hard to make lots of people happy at these events. She’s a tremendous volunteer on board the Free Bookmobile, and even made a special batch of her whimsical bookmarks to give away alongside the books.
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