Via Colori: Art & Music in the Park

Meant to post about this sooner… Tomorrow & Sunday (November 22nd & 23rd) there’s a cool-sounding festival going on up on the edges of downtown, in Sam Houston Park, at Allen Parkway & Bagby. It’s called Via Colori, and it’s supposed to be a “street painting festival,” with over 175(!) artists creating their own unique pieces of art on the cement.

The artists each buy a square or three to paint, the proceeds from which go to benefit the Center for Hearing and Speech, a ful-service facility that teaches children with hearing loss to actually speak, rather than just rely on sign language to communicate. I can’t even imagine what it must be like to not be able to hear the world around you — the birds outside, people’s voices, the first Weakerthans album — much less be able to talk to other people. Add the fact that it’s for helping kids, and, well, that strikes me as an awful good cause.

Of course, the icing on the cake is the music — the festival features a bunch of cool local folks, including Two Star Symphony, Flying Fish Sailors, The Wild Moccasins, Sideshow Tramps, Carrie Ann and the Apocalyptics, & Arthur Yoria, all of whom are well worth seeing. The bands are playing at two stages scattered across two different days; the full schedule’s here.

And, uh, the whole thing’s free. Free! Kinda odd for a benefit, I’ll admit, but it makes some sense if you factor in the money the artists pay/donate for their squares. Cool deal…