backroom | Projects | Film Stream
A LOVELY TIME (2018-2022)
A Lovely Time was a music and arts festival tucked away in the pines of Turin, NY. As creative director and curator My mission was to create a refreshing experience of inspiration, that in itself curates a welcoming and self sustaining community. Combining nostalgic memories with utopian ideas; we designed a weekend of workshops, performances and activities intended to be the catalyst for lasting positive connections that guests take with them after we close our gates. Year after year we grew and extended our lovely community wider and wider but remained true to our values of inclusivity in the installations and kindness in our crowd. We built an outdoor venue with intimate stages that presented over 90 musical artists and in the 5 years we held the festival.
When explaining this project to new people I constantly heard myself saying “we are more than a music festival” to then boast about the incredible workshop hosts that made meeting and authentically interacting with others so natural. The energy felt like a summer camp for grown-ups with over 15 workshops scheduled for the weekend. Deep down I had this idea that if I included light hearted activities that I classified as programming of curiosity, discovery and interaction then the festival goers would inherently be people looking for those outlets and become instant friends because of those disarming commonalities. A lovely time was had, it was temporal and A Lovely Time the festival has passed. The entity itself still exists in friendships and in the background as a 501c3 nonprofit that supports arts and skateboarding.
Traces of the festival exist in different physical forms from the space itself, leaving a 100 yards of concrete in a skatebowl, campgrounds, and 18 hole disc golf course. While other infrastructure such as the original stages and shady grove of trees have been scarred or torn out by an EF3 tornado in August of 2023, the relationships built in that space are permanent. The space has since grown with and without us. A once unutilized dead zone of the ski resort now has purpose for the resort to host other events. To this day I still have lovely people asking if the festival will ever make a return. We are currently working to close out the open end of the bowl for the wedding of two lovelies from Philadelphia. It feels like a full circle moment and closure to a project we started in 2018.
OPERATION SNAKE ON THE COURT
Setting the stage here I will glaze over the history of the space and how it came to be. Back in 2010 I joined a group of skaters that started a DIY at Ormond PArk in Syracuse, NY. It was called the spot. The spot began as set of abandoned and neglected tennis courts, that were originally for the housing projects, that were demolished when i graduated high school. It started out with homemade wood ramps, boxes and rails, made and dropped off by locals. this allowed for a constantly ever changing skate ENVIRONMENT on the courts. The ramps would degrade, break and decompose; most of the time they wouldnt last a year. It truly was a space of skate and destroy. The natural progression to make features more permanent began with a brick ledge and fat piece of 4 inch angle iron. From there we installed curbs, banks, quarterpipes and rails all under the radar of the city. UNtil, they noticed and chained the gates closed with a padlock. Someone responded in protest with cutting the fence down so it could no longer be chained. this spawned the unique relationship between the spot and the city of syracuse eventually seeing the communal worth of the space and the growth of community it housed.
