DubuqueFest Fine Arts Festival celebrates its 36th year as Iowa's oldest all arts festival held in the heart of historic downtown Dubuque, May 17-19. Under the direction of collaborative partners, musician and promoter Aaron Hefel, and arts administrator Paula Neuhaus, the weekend is packed full of free music, art, and culture for all ages. The Dubuque County Fine Arts Society, a non-profit arts organization, launched the multi-faceted all arts festival in 1977 to promote the arts and to revitalize the downtown area by community building through arts and culture development. After 36 years of success DubuqueFest honors great traditions and adds contemporary twists.

The weekend features a fine art fair, a vinyl record fair, a local author book fair, live music and performance on two stages, children's hands-on art activities, an Old House Tour by the Old Home Enthusiasts, a book release and reading by the Dubuque Area Writers Guild, a community chalk mural project, pottery demonstrations, and featuring artist Tim Olson's community photography project, "The World's Longest Panoramic Portrait of a Three Day Outdoor Arts Festival."

All events are free and open to the public. (The Old House Tour is a ticketed event.) Here are some highlights of what the weekend offers. For a full schedule of events visit www.dubuquefest.org.

DubuqueFest Fine Arts Festival Event Calendar May 17-19, 2013 Town Clock Plaza & Washington Park in Downtown Dubuque

Please note: All DubuqueFest Fine Arts Festival events are free and open to the public. The Annual Old House Enthusiasts Tour is off-site from the festival and is a separate ticketed event hosted by the Old House Enthusiasts in conjunction with DubuqueFest.

Fine Art Fair

Saturday, 10am-5pm & Sunday, 10am-4pm in Washington Park
Our juried fine art fair in Washington Park features the work of 70 artists & artisans. We invite you to meet the artists, learn about process & inspiration, and invest in original hand crafted pieces. Shop for hand-blown & fused glass, ceramics, metal work, free form sculpture, painting, jewelry, fiber, fabric, photography, mixed media, textiles, copper work, hand turned wood, watercolors, leather work, wearable art, & more! It's an art gallery in the park!

Wheel Thrown Pottery Demonstrations by Mississippi Mud Studios
Saturday, 10am-5pm & Sunday, 10am-4pm in Washington Park
Potter Gary Carstens and friends of Mississippi Mud Studios offer wheel-thrown pottery demonstrations. You can try too!

"The World's Longest Panoramic Portrait of a Three Day Outdoor Arts Festival" with artist Tim Olson
Saturday, 10am-5pm & Sunday, 10am-4pm throughout Washington Park
You're invited to find Tim & his old-timey camera during the fest & pose for this panoramic portrait! Photographer and artist Tim Olson will use a 1935 vintage studio camera to create a hundred foot long portrait of DubuqueFest. During the festival, Olson will roll his camera along a path that winds through Washington Park and, at intervals of approximately ten minutes in time and ten feet in distance, he will stop and make a single exposure. The 250+ photographs will be stitched together to create a single, highly detailed panoramic portrait of the festival. Look for Tim & his camera during the festival and join him to pose for the portrait! This project is made possible by funding from the Iowa Arts Council.

Children's Creation Station
Saturday, 10am-5pm & Sunday, 10am-4pm in Washington Park
Parents and children are invited to get creative with hands-on projects. This year we feature the art of sand painting. Sand paintings have a long established cultural history in numerous social groupings around the globe. Get your face painted and join us in the Story Bubble for storytelling for all ages! Story Bubble is made possible by a partnership with Great Midwestern Educational Theatre Company.

Community Chalk Collaborative Illustration
Saturday, 11am-2pm in the Town Clock Plaza
Join artists and volunteers as they lead you in creating an illustration that explores community creativity. This sidewalk mural invites everyone to be an artist!

Trainwreck Productions Sketches in the Park: Taming of the Shrew
Saturday & Sunday, 12 pm in Washington Park
Trainwreck Productions bring a scene from William Shakespeare's comedy Taming of the Shrew, full of physical comedy and stage combat, to life in Washington Park. TWP bring this highlight of their comedy set at Flora Park Playground to DubuqueFest. See the entire play (free!) at Flora Park all weekend. Visit TrainwreckProductions.org for full details.

Dubuque Area Writers Guild Annual Book Release Reception Gallery 2013: "Facets of Time"
Friday, 6pm at Dubuque Museum of Art
The Dubuque Area Writers Guild invites you to the reading & release reception for Gallery: Facets of Time, an anthology of original work featuring local writers and artists. Celebrate an evening of words, refreshments, and readings by selected contributors. Books will be available for purchase at the reception, the local author book fair in the Roshek Building on Saturday, and at the art fair information booth in Washington Park throughout the weekend.

Record Fair
Saturday, 10am-5pm in Roshek Building Lobby (Enter on 7th Street)
The Record Fair will showcase local retailers and private collectors offering vinyl records & 45s for sale or trade. Vendors will offer everything from high-end, out-of-print rarities, to more common titles at bargain prices. The fair will slant heavily toward vinyl sales and awareness of the record stores in the region, but vendors will offer CDs, cassettes, DVDs, books, apparel and many other goodies.

Local Author Book Fair
Saturday, 10am-5 pm in Roshek Building Lobby (Enter on 7 th Street)
Our newest addition to DubuqueFest! Shop our book fair comprised of 20 local authors. Meet the authors, pick up some new books, get them signed, and learn about the writing life from your favorite local authors. The fair is features books for children, photography, fiction, non-fiction, memoir, poetry, humor, comic books, and more! This event is hosted by River Lights Bookstore for DubuqueFest.

Julien Dubuque International Film Festival's "Best of Fest Screening"
Sunday, 12pm-3pm, Dubuque Museum of Art
Julien International Film Festival presents a "Best of Fest Screening featuring a favorite or two from their 2013 film festival. Special guest filmmakers will talk about their experiences working on the films and the film festival.

Amusements for Children by LT Amusements
Saturday & Sunday 10am-4pm
7th Street & Washington Park
Climbing wall, bouncing castle, super slide, and more!

HEADLING ACTS ARE HIGHLIGHTED

Friday May 17 - Town Clock Stage

5:00 pm
River Glen - Folk and bluegrass meet contemporary rock and urban styles.

6:30 pm
The Fast Clydes -Class rockabilly, pompadours and all, will get your toes tapping and your hips twisting.

8 pm
Soulsa! - Dubuque's hottest Salsa orchestra will get your dancing with Latin rhythms straight from the soul.

Saturday May 18 - Town Clock Stage

10 am
Northeast Iowa School of Music Recital - Instrumental ensemble performs on the Main Stage.

12 pm
Dubuque Senior High Jazz Studio - Your favorite jazz renditions from the DSHS jazz band.

3:30pm
Unstrung Heroes - Folk songs about Dubuque and life in a river town.

5:30pm
The Shams Band - Bluegrass, folk, and rock playfully brought together by this Chicago outfit.

7:30pm
Maps and Atlases - At times hyper and kinetic, other times, lush and melodic indie rock from Chicago on Barsuk Records.

9 pm
The Heavenly States - This Oakland to Austin indie pop group have been a Dubuque favorite for years. Their brand of intensely fun and personal music filled with loud guitars, driving rhythms, and violin will get you dancing!

Saturday May 18 - Washington Park Gazebo

11 am
Dubuque Fiddlers - Youth string ensemble under the direction of Ann Duchow.

12pm
Trainwreck Productions - This local found-space theatre group bring a scene from William Shakespeare's comedy Taming of the Shrew, full of physical comedy and stage combat, to life in Washington Park.

12:30pm
Peter Fraterdeus - Traditional folk and Irish tunes from our local troubadour.

2pm
Nate Jenkins - Indie folk originals and covers with soulful intensity.

3 pm
Julien Chamber Choir - Indie folk originals and covers with soulful intensity.- Local chamber choir singing in perfect harmony!

Sunday May 19 - Town Clock Stage
10 am
Dubuque Dance Studio - High-energy modern dance performance from Dubuque's premier youth ensemble

12 pm
Dubuque YM/YWCA Dance Team
The talented young people from the Y Dance Team show off their skills!

12:30 pm
PanrhythmiX - Steel drum youth ensemble celebrate the sounds of the Caribbean.

2 pm
Youth Musical Showcase, hosted by Mary Mabusth
Area teens take their bands and talents to the stage! Everyone wins in a showcase!

Sunday, May 19- Washington Park Gazebo

12 pm
Trainwreck Productions Sketches in the Park: Taming of the Shrew
Trainwreck Productions bring a scene from William Shakespeare's comedy Taming of the Shrew, full of physical comedy and stage combat, to life in Washington Park. TWP bring this highlight of their comedy set at Flora Park Playground to DubuqueFest. See the entire play (free!) at Flora Park all weekend. Visit TrainwreckProductions.org for full details.

12:30 pm

Peter Fraterdeus & Dan Caraway:  Celtic music on guitar and violin.

2 pm
Denny Garcia
Bluesy troubadour sings about about life on the road and the river.

3:30 pm
Dubuque Chorale
Voices, voices, and more voices!

Visit www.dubuquefest.org to stay up to date!

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Davenport, Iowa (April 23, 2013) - The Figge Art Museum will hold its third PechaKucha Night on Thursday, April 25th at 6:30pm in the museum lobby.

At PechaKucha Night, guests will hear a variety of entertaining talks, from RAGBRAI to wood carving, Junior Theatre to photography! This week's lineup includes: Dawn Wohlford-Metallo, Peter Small, Anna Pagnucci, Raelene Pullen, Ryan Collins, Megan Schoff, Patrick Reed, Martha Bonte, Bill Wohlford and Dan Sheridan.

Devised by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham of Klein Dytham architecture, the first PechaKucha Night was held in Tokyo in February 2003 as an event for young designers to meet, network and show their work in public. Now, they are held in over 600 cities around the world by a city organizer. PechaKucha Nights are FREE, informal, and fun gatherings where creative people get together and share their ideas, works, thoughts, or hobbies in the PechaKucha 20x20 format. This format allows presenters to show 20 slides for 20 seconds each (six minutes and 40 seconds in total) to keep presentations concise and fast-paced. The images advance automatically and the presenter talks along to the images.

Museum admission is free on Thursday evenings and this event will include free light appetizers beginning at 5:30 p.m. along with a cash bar. For more information on future dates, visit www.figgeartmuseum.org. If you are interested in becoming a presenter please contact Melissa Hueting at mhueting@figgeartmuseum.org.

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The public is invited to join the Muscatine Art Center in welcoming Carol Ehlers, art history speaker, as she presents a 45 minute lecture on the art of French Neo-Impressionist Paul Signac. The lecture will take place Thursday, April 25 at 5:30 pm in the Muscatine Art Center's Music Room. Admission is free.

Paul Signac was born in Paris on November 11, 1863 to a well to do family and grew up in the cultural district of Montmartre. By the age of 18, Signac studied architecture before deciding to pursue a career as a painter after attending an exhibit of Claude Monet's work. He chose to be an Impressionist painter because of his liking for Monet, the outdoors, originality, and independence.  He had no formal art instruction but devoted himself to the study of the works of Manet, Monet, Degas, and Caillebotte.

In 1884 Signac met Georges Seurat at the first Société des Artistes Indépendants and was struck by Seurat's meticulous methods. By 1885, under Seurat's influence, he abandoned the short brushstrokes of impressionism to experiment with scientifically juxtaposed small dots of pure color based on the laws of color theory established by the chemist Eugène Chevreul. These dots were intended to combine and in the viewer's eye, the defining feature of pointillism, a branch of Neo-Impressionism that Seurat and Signac successfully coined.

By 1892, he moved from Paris to St Tropez, and he was painting almost entirely in his studio from sketches and watercolors originally made in front of the scenes he found in the course of his travels. As an avid sailor, he went on a number of cruises, which took him to various ports in France, Italy, Holland and Constantinople.

Signac was president of the Société des Artistes Indépendants from 1908 until his death at age seventy-two in 1935. He encouraged the next generation of young artists by exhibiting their controversial works. He inspired Henri Matisse and André Derain in particular, thus playing a decisive role in the evolution of the Fauvist movement.

In 1992 the Muscatine Art Center's collections were significantly enriched by a gift of twenty-seven works of art by Toulouse-Lautrec, Matisse, Degas, Boudin, Chagall, Renoir, and other European artists. The collection was a gift from the estate of Mary Musser Gilmore in honor of her parents, Richard Drew Musser and Sarah Walker Musser. The paintings are on permanent display in the Laura Musser Mansion.

EVENT DETAILS:

Lecture: Paul Signac: Scientific Theory and Pointillism

Who: Carol Ehlers

When: Thursday, April 25 2013

Time: 5:30 PM

Where: The Muscatine Art Center's Music Room

Admission to this program is FREE.

Please contact Katy Doherty, Program Coordinator, with any questions or concerns at

563-263-8282 or by email at kdoherty@muscatineiowa.gov.

The Muscatine Art Center is open to the public Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday from 10 AM to 5 PM, Thursday from 10 AM to 7 PM and Saturday and Sunday from 1 to 5 PM Admission is FREE.