Silver Spring Town Center, Inc. will host the 11th annual Harvest Moon Festival at Veterans Plaza in downtown Silver Spring this Sunday.
The free multicultural event, featuring arts, entertainment, and exhibitors, will kick off at 1 p.m. and feature performances from several local groups:
The Culkin School of Traditional Irish Dance will include soft and hard-shoe Irish dancing. Founded in 1997, the school prides itself on teaching over 1,000 children and adults Irish Dance during those 27 years. With locations in Glen Echo Park and Rockville, the school serves various families and adults, providing the highest standard in Irish dance instruction.
The Positive Vibrations Youth Steel Orchestra has been sharing its melodies nationally and internationally since 1996, starting in founder Lorna Green’s suburban basement with 14 students and some steel pans. At the end of two weeks, the group completed the “Star Spangled Banner” and performed it for the Olympic torch ceremony, passing through Largo, Md. Within a year, the group relocated to Hyattsville, and the rest is history.
Hālau Nohona Hawai’i is a Native Hawaiian cultural nonprofit serving members of the D.C. area community, whose goal is to enrich and make a positive impact by sharing the spirit of aloha. Co-founded by celebrity chef and Kumu Hula Kaimana Chee, Hālau Nohona Hawai’i provides weekly classes in hula, music, singing and Native Hawaiian culture in Silver Spring. Their performance will showcase traditional and contemporary hula, providing a captivating experience that brings the essence of Hawai’i to life through dance and music.
The Crush Funk Brass Band brings music to unexpected places by blending the New Orleans sound with a D.C. vibe!
Silver Spring Flow Arts is a movement-based art form that combines creative expression and skill-based techniques with object manipulation and other movement arts, such as dance, martial arts, and circus arts. The goal is to achieve a flow state where the practitioner can move, dance, and improvise with their tool effortlessly.
Free art workshops at the festival include:
Still Life Painting — An Acrylic Painting Workshop with artist Kedir Keri Osman: Kedir Keri Ousman was born November 18, 1968 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He spent his childhood in the beautiful densely forested southwest province of Ethiopia. He attended the Addis Ababa Fine Art School from 1985 to 1989. In 1993 he was accepted into the Painting Department at the Surikov Institute, in the studio of Eugeny Maximovitch. He graduated with a Master’s degree in 2000. He went on to study computer graphics in Rostov, Russia. In addition to oil painting and computer graphics, Kedir also has a strong interest in the art of fresco, sgraffito, and stone mosaic. From October 2001-September 2005, he worked as department head at Neon Addis, an Advertising Company in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Since September 2004 he has worked at Addis Ababa University School of Fine Arts and Design as an instructor in Painting and History of Art and at Addis Ababa University, and at Saint Yared Music School as a Lecturer in History of Art.
Visual Fitness 4 All — Marking & Mapping® Our Gratitude with Renee Sandell, PhD: Artist/Educator/Author Renee Sandell’s art, teaching, and research focus on Visual Fitness 4 All, the result of her over 45 years of art teaching experience in classrooms and museums. A retired university professor in Art Education, Sandell is the co-author of three books and multiple publications. She was founder/director of NAEA’s SummerVision DC—a 4-day, museum-based, intensive bootcamp program she led for a decade, prior to the Pandemic. Sandell has received awards for her Form+Theme+Context (FTC)® methodology as a Balanced Way of Seeing®. Sandell’s Visual Fitness courses and “workouts” are dedicated to Engaging Creativity and Insight® in everyone, everywhere. She currently teaches for Smithsonian Associates Studio Arts, Yellow Barn Studio, Rancho La Puerta, 92NY 60+ Himan Brown Program, and other venues.
Veterans Plaza is located at 1 Veterans Place in downtown Silver Spring. More information can be found on Facebook at the festival’s event listing.