(NORTH ADAMS, Mass.) — The sixth annual public arts festival DownStreet Art opens with a downtown celebration on Thursday, June 20, 2013, from 5 to 10 p.m. Main Street will shut down vehicular traffic for a World Music Dance Party featuring Montreal-based global hip-hop group Nomadic Massive, which starts at 8 p.m. This year’s festival theme is “Beyond Industry,” reflecting a North Adams that attempts to progress beyond its post-factory town and industrial past by using the arts as a catalyst for socioeconomic growth. DownStreet Art will run through October 31.

The June 20 kick-off celebration – happening throughout downtown North Adams – will coincide with Wilco’s Solid Sound Festival weekend at MASS MoCA.

This summer’s events, which are free and open to the public, will include gallery openings, a dance party on Main Street, a wandering light show, a community reading of Frederick Douglass’s famous Fourth of July address, new murals in the downtown, and musical performances to include Montreal-based, multicultural, multilingual hip-hop band, Nomadic Massive.

The season’s exhibition lineup will include a wide array of visual artists whose works tackle the scope of industry, whether within the narrow focus of the art industry or the broader context of industrial structures formed society.

 

DownStreet Art’s initiative for this season additionally reflects the theme of progression, with four new “pop-up” (temporary) galleries and the commissioning of a multi-piece mural project created by artist Peter Dudek, which visitors will discover throughout downtown North Adams. For “Mural Series: Peter Dudek,” Dudek will create an ongoing series of architectural cartoons where different forms of housing represent a world in which buildings not only have a consciousness, but also the desire and ability to perpetuate.

 

In addition, in “Paint it Big! Paint it Public!,” a teen workshop led by local artist Andrew Davis as a program of The Clark, students will create a public mural based on Albrecht Dürer’s famous 16th century woodcut “The Rhinoceros.” This mural will be formed in the Main Street alley, between Shear Madness Salon and Eagle Street, July 15-17, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.