Arts Collage needs an audience

By Lindsay Simmons
Sun contributor

Harry Fried is frantic. The chilly, wet weather has been playing games with him all summer, and the spontaneous thunderstorms make it nearly impossible to decide where to set up for the installments of the Manitou Music Festival.

On the afternoon of a concert, you can find Fried pacing the streets of Glen Arbor and madly checking AccuWeather.com. The festival’s rain location is at the Glen Arbor Town Hall, but the quick set-up time and outdoor ambience of the Lake Street Studios stage is much preferred if nature cooperates.

Fried, his wife Allison and several volunteers organize a majority of the Manitou Music Festival. Allison, daughter of the late arts pioneer Suzanne Wilson, is part owner of Lake Street Studios, and the Frieds have seen crowds of over 70 at the stage.

But one portion of the festival has not been so popular. Although more diverse, the Arts Collage has repeatedly failed to brew interest among the community, or so it seems.

“I don’t know what to say anymore,” Fried says. This is his fourth year of planning the Arts Collage. “There has been 25 people at most; last year there were none.”

“Arts Collage is all about trying to present performance that’s not normally the everyday fare,” Fried says. With the sole purpose of allowing people to “experience art,” he draws noted performers to Glen Arbor for the two-night event. Now, “we’re looking for an audience,” he says.

This year the Arts Collage will be held August 4 and 5, from 8–10 p.m. both nights. The first night is free, and both evenings will consist of music, poetry, dance and film. Performers include indie/folk band Holly Mae and the Painted Room, poet Matt Sadler, musician Laurel Premo and Jumping Off the Bandwagon Contemporary Dance Company. Night one will include Climbing Sainte-Victoire: A Danced Homage to Paul Cézanne, a production by Peter Sparling. Night two will offer the best of the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the “original North American independent film festival”. Fried invites all ages, and everyone is welcome to bring snacks, blankets and cameras.

There are no famous performers, per se, and the Arts Collage is a different shape than anything found in the mass media. “That’s the difficulty of owning a theater and running a festival,” Fried says. He is uncertain of how to make the collage more appealing, and he only truly cares about the exposition of art.

“Art is not about comfort,” Fried says. He believes it is meant to expand the concept of one’s self. “Nothing we’re presenting is obscene or obscure,” he says. “We have arranged a very engaging composition of different genres.”

Fried struggles with advertising, wondering how much is ever enough, and there is never a question of money or profit. The only wish is to provide an audience for the performers and presenters who have traveled up north to showcase their art.

“What can I say to make people come?” For now, Fried will continue his efforts to diversify art in Glen Arbor, rain or shine.