Where can you go to glare at enlarged eyeballs rotating in the trees? Or make a request at a living jukebox manned by two gentlemen, who will play you a happy, sad or random tune, depending on your mood, if you honk a horn? You don’t have to plunge into a rabbit hole. You just have to go to Folk Fest and visit their annual Prairie Outdoor Exhibition.

Folk Fest frequenters will no doubt recall the transcendent work displayed outdoors and done by local artists from years past, such as the unsettling eyeballs courtesy of Rick Unger. This year promises equally chimerical fare.

“This year Corrina Loewen and I are creating a series of large, colourful, wind spun flowers that we’ll plant out in the field,” Unger said. “We liked the idea of kinetic sculptures and wanted to keep it thematic for Folk fest as well.”

Unger’s past offerings include a sculpture series of translucent bodies entitled “Clarus Corpus,” which he created with Teyana Neufeld out of clear packing tape. Their appearance is akin to glacial children who dance and play music amidst the greenery.

Echoing this artistic objective is Glen Knapp, whose work “Portal Pillar” will be tailor-made specifically for Folk fest.

“I am building a six-foot pillar which is fixed with totemic images, paying homage to the natural surroundings of the site. My pieces of the past have to do with the spirit of the festival itself,” he explains.

Knapp has been attending the festival for 20 years and designed his portal pillar to act with the natural setting it is displayed in, to encourage the observer towards contemplation.

This leaning towards the naturalistic is also being pursued by local metal smith and jewelry maker Chantal Parenty, who is attempting her first large sculpture for the exhibition – a six-foot-tall woman wearing a dress affixed with copper leaves.

Performance art is a presence at Prairie Outdoor, with Marlon and Curtis Wiebe of “Secondhandpants” as the human jukebox for the third time at Folk Fest. Curtis categorizes their work as a Science Folktion Jukebox Sideshow – a piece of “technofolkology.” Read more about these brothers on page 10.

Photographer David Wityk, who was behind the haunting photos of Mitzi’s Chicken Fingers and The BDI featured in the Winnipeg Art Gallery’s “Subconscious City,” is participating this year for the first time. His work is something of a departure from the aforementioned artists. Having returned from Europe to photograph its post-industrial ruins – including an abandoned hospital in Poland and a decaying glass factory in Germany – Prairie Outdoor will showcase the products of this venture.

Wityk views his work as “an analysis of what’s going on in industry.”

He also plans to showcase his ambitious 70 block montage photo of “every street front on Main between Portage and Inkster” sometime in the future.

Published in Volume 63, Number 28 of The Uniter (June 18, 2009)