Art fans of all kinds flocked to Wells on the weekend to hear music, watch live theatre performances, take part in workshops and much more at several venues throughout the small town over the weekend.
Artists from around the Cariboo, B.C. and Canada performed at the festival, the first ArtsWells festival since 2019 after fires and a pandemic prevented it for the past several years.
The festival is organized by Island Mountain Arts, their executive director, Elyssia Sasaki, said the festival is the perfect way to kick off the summer.
"I can't think of a more rich and rewarding way to start your summer," she said before the festival. "Live music, it emboldens us all, it grows our hearts. And theatre and things like that allow us to laugh and cry and think. Films allow us to see different perspectives of people. I think that there's so much that the festival brings that not only hopes to help people but also hopes to just remind them how beautiful it is to be alive."
The Sunset Theatre hosted live theatre performances as well as cereal and classic cartoons during a morning of the festival. Julia Mackey is the Sunset's director of presentations and performed her play, Jake's Gift, at ArtsWells. Jake's Gift part of the Sunset's Exploration Series, which is designed to give artists room to let their creativity run free.
The first ArtsWells festival Mackey attended was around 2005.
"What it is is just a beautiful compilation of people from all over who enjoy and appreciate art of all kinds. Whether it's music, theatre, visual art, all of it. So it's just a really wonderful experience," she said. "The amount of work that's gone into kind of getting it back o its feet is so remarkable, Elyssia and her whole team have just been amazing to work with and we're really excited to see it coming back and I think everyone's been really thrilled to be here again."
Mackey said she was thrilled to perform Jake's Gift once again at the Sunset where it was performed and will be having performances of it throughout the summer as well.
Jake's Gift is a play about a World War 2 veteran returning to Normandy for the 60th anniversary of D-Day. To write the play, Mackey attended the actual 60th anniversary of D-Day in 2004 and interviewed veterans who returned there.
"This is my 18th year performing Jake's Gift, I'm almost as old as Jake now," she joked.
At the Wells Community Hall, festival goers learned Bhangra dancing, enjoyed live music and participated in The Funk is Tight, a Price is Right-style show hosted and scored by band Major Funk. Participants guessed prices of everything from trampolines to Cheez Whiz and played classic Price is Right mini-games while the audience shouted out their thoughts on items' prices to contestants.
ArtsWells may have come to a close but the small community still has plenty of art to offer. The Sunset Theatre has released their season schedule, Island Mountain Arts hosts events and workshops throughout the year and the artistic community continues to create and perform.
