The festival celebrates the summer solstice while highlighting the richness and diversity of the arts in South Los Angeles and beyond. It reflects Blue Roof Studios’ commitment to fostering and amplifying creativity, connection, and inclusion within the community.

This year’s festival theme is Joy. Galia Linn, Blue Roof Studios’ Creative Director, says about the theme:

“There is pain and there is joy. Art conflates and embraces the whole between the two. The festival will hold space for communities to come together and connect with their own unique sense of joy.”

Free and open to the public, the festival includes five hours of free art exhibitions, performances, music, participatory art projects, artist led workshops, curated art bazaar, and resident artists’ open studios. Every visitor is offered free valet, a healthy free lunch and we are joined by dozens of community partners and vendors.

The festival includes over 100+ artists and each year draws a larger crowd with an overall capacity of 1,200 diverse visitors. Guests will receive a free art supply gift offered by our sponsors Artist & Craftsman Supply. This year’s art exhibitions include Permanent Rainbow, a group show curated by Anuradha Vikram in the Blue Roof Studios Main Sanctuary and selected outdoor public spaces. Permanent Rainbow brings together artists whose work invokes the poignancy and nostalgia we experience when we continue to feel love for those who have disappointed us. Having survived the worst failings of others, and standing on the ruins of collapsing systems of authority, these works nourish joy born of the knowledge that we can thrive amid the rubble.

Kristine Schomaker, director of Shoebox PR and publisher for Art and Cake returns with an exhibition in the Project Room titled The Politics of Beauty. In Ann Herbert’s essay titled "Handy Tips on How to Behave at the Death of the World," in Whole Earth Review, 1995, she states we must “practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty." In today's dark times, Schomaker has invited artists to share work that is inspired by beauty in all forms to counter the negativity, darkness and sadness that permeates our current sociopolitical culture.

Self Help Graphics & Art will be leading a special project titled Make it Count: Census Art Workshop to explore why it’s important to be counted in the 2020 census. Through silkscreen printing and watercolor, participants will envision and identify their community needs, and paint a picture of what their neighborhood can look like when counted.

Blue Roof Studios also invites FULL BLEDE to launch their summer issue at the festival. A free broadsheet featuring contemporary writing and art, FULL BLEDE is independently published, designed, edited, and curated by Sacha Baumann. In collaboration with Blue Roof Studios, the summer issue will feature work by festival participants and others, responding to the theme “hysteria.” Blue Roof Studios is also pleased to announce Institutional Partners (many returning from previous festivals) who will be providing a variety of art making workshops including the California African American Museum (CAAM), CalArts Community Arts Partnership, ESMoA, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Self Help Graphics & Art, UCLA Visual and Performing Arts Education Program, and Vincent Price Art Museum.

Blue Roof Studios resident artists will open their studios for the festival. Live music, performances, additional visual artists, and more institutional and community partners will be announced throughout the months to come.

Media Contact Information

Festival Producer, Allison M Keating, blueroofstudios6@gmail.com

Press Agent, 907 Marketing, Ernesto Comodo, ernesto@907k.com

Press Agent, Shoebox LA, Kristine Schomaker, shoeboxpr@gmail.com

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Help Blue Roof Studio create this extraordinary and ambitious free festival by making a tax deductible donation today!