Eugene Weekly : Calendar : 06.30.05

Where to begin with this year's Art and the Vineyard festival? The four-day spectacular, with "More of a Good Thing" as its theme, features everything from an international food court to specialty booths to musical performances by Dirty Martini (pictured), The Cheeseburgers, Satin Love Orchestra and more. Some three dozen Oregon authors make appearances over the weekend, including children's book author and illustrator Kurt Cyrus and UO professor and biographer Lauren Kessler (for a complete list of author appearances, see Book Notes, p. 31). The Youth Arts Arena features magic performances, plays, drawing demonstrations and much more to entertain the smaller attendees; on the other end of the spectrum, Lane County wineries (and four guests from outside the county) offer delicious beverages in the Wine Court. Take home some art for your house or garden from the Artists' Marketplace, which features work by more than 145 artists from six states and one foreign country. And don't skip the specialty booths, where face painting and massages are side by side with Frog's joke books. See Friday Calendar or www.artandthevineyard.org

Lane Arts Council's First Friday ArtWalk has something a little different on tap for July. Join hosts Bob Hart (museum director of the Lane County Historical Museum) and Carolyn Kranzler (architect and AIA member) for a walk focusing on the architecture and background of historic buildings in downtown Eugene. The Walk begins at 5:30 pm at the McDonald Theatre, a performing arts venue which, like the second and third stops, appears on the National Register of Historic Places. Stop #2 is the Downtown Athletic Club, which encompasses the historic Ax Billy Department Store (pictured). From there the tour continues to the Eugene Hotel, followed by Goldworks Jewelry, featuring work by Mike Leckie. It's back to architecture for Stop #5, the Park Place Building, before the walk ends with a stop at Jacobs Gallery, where the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators' Annual Juried Exhibition is on display. Many other downtown galleries are open late but not part of the walk. See Friday Calendar, or go to www.lanearts.org for details.

One of the highlights of this year's Oregon Bach Festival is sure to be the appearance of the Kronos Quartet, (pictured) musicians who for 30 years have pursued their commitment to expanding the range and context of the string quartet. As EW's Brett Campbell wrote in our OBF preview, "Now, the Bay Area-based former rebels are themselves an institution, still passionately devoted to new music and breaking musical boundaries. And it's been way too long since they've been in Eugene. Their program includes works by Peter Sculthorpe (inspired by the geography of his native Australia), an arrangement of the wonderful Icelandic drone-rock band Sigur Ros' 'The Fly Freer,' a piece from the series of works Kronos commissioned from promising young composers and a Bollywood film music arrangement." And that's just the start; the program also includes Mexican music from the '50s to the present. See Friday Calendar.