New Yorkers who didn’t leave town this past Memorial Day weekend had plenty to do in addition to the Lower East Side Festival of the Arts at Theatre For a New City or the Loisaida Festival on Ave. C, that returned to the streets after being presented virtually during the pandemic Pause.
From construction sheds and (almost) naked bodies used as artists’ canvases to the return of the local street art fair to opera in a community garden or just the sweet sounds of blues piano or friends jamming in a shady area of Washington Square Park, New York did not disappoint.
The Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit returned after two years. Forty-one artists of all genres: painting, sculpture, photography, ceramics, glass, painted glass textiles, jewelry, and assemblage showed their arts under tents along University stretching from Waverly Place to 11th Street. The Outdoor Art Exhibit continues June 4 and 5th along the same route.
Campos Community Garden, 644 E. 12th between B & C hosted the free opera poetry Orlando—Hero of Love, a distillation of Handel’s baroque opera, its wooden elevated platform, the stage for the violins, viola, cello and harpsichord. Singers sang in front of an audience that also stretched into the garden in what was a beautiful summer evening. This production by Opera Praktikos and Opera Essential will perform again June 10-11, 6:30.
