Thursday, June 5, 2008

McKinney 2008 Arts and Jazz Festival on June 7-8 to proceed despite construction downtown

By Pegasus News wire

MCKINNEY — Historic Downtown McKinney will be full of energy and music this weekend for the 2008 Arts and Jazz Festival. The two-day event takes place on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sunday from 1 to 6 p.m.

"The performers on this year's festival are stellar and as unique in design as McKinney," said Mary Medrick, President of The Creative Arts Alliance. As the name of the festival implies, the weekend is all about the arts and jazz music. The musical performance line-up also includes Latin soul, funk and big band.

"The Creative Arts Alliance heads up the entertainment at this year's festival, and we are excited to present the highly regarded talent that will be showcased during the festival," said Main Street Program Director Ty Lake.

This year, the children's activities are sponsored in part by the McKinney Art House. Centered on the art and jazz theme, the kids' attractions feature water color and pastel painting workshops by Marie Blocker, artist and teacher at the McKinney Art House. Hands-on community painting, lead by Rene Wrenwood, includes painting art decor to be donated to the Samaritan Inn Gateway apartments.

Pottery wheels, chalk art, jewelry-making and clay mask-making by Lynn Hubner are more arts-centered activities. Sonia Knox, owner of The Art House of McKinney, and Annie Royer of McKinney Art and Design Studio have donated their time and efforts to make the children's play area interactive throughout the weekend.

Event-goers will work up an appetite making beautiful art, so vendors will tempt taste buds with food like corn dogs, funnel cakes, bratwurst, steak sandwiches, gyros, fried green tomatoes, barbecue and ice cream. Also, more than a dozen restaurants that are located in Historic Downtown McKinney will be open. Spoons Restaurant will cook up some fun with a crawfish boil. And more than a dozen north Texas wineries will offer samplings of their wines.

"Downtown is under construction, but we're doing things to help people around the construction to enjoy the wonderful festival. The end result to improve infrastructure is important to festivals like Art and Jazz," said Lake.

Source: City of McKinney

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