From Cirque du Soleil’s stop into the Leon’s Centre over the summer to the annual Froid’Art Festival, to a lowkey night meeting friends to listen to jazz at Musiikki, this year was full of high-quality art. The Journal’s staff and contributors take a look back at their favourite events from Queen’s and Kingston.
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“Getting to see the Froid’Art installations around Kingston was definitely a highlight to my year at Queen’s. While I had never seen the exhibit before, after interviewing David Dossett for a Journal Arts article, I knew I had to get out and see the sculptures for myself.
What’s fun about the exhibit is that the sculptures—paintings encased in 300 pounds of ice—are scattered across Kingston, so you never know where you might stumble upon one. They offer a map of all their locations, but I preferred the randomness of finding one on the street, or outside one of Kingston’s local businesses.
These paintings not only brought some color to Kingston’s dreary winter days, but also seemed to bring the city together, interweaving all different parts of Kingston into one big art exhibit.”
—Chloe Sarrazin, copy editor
“In early March, I visited Musiikki Café for the first time. It’s a cute bar on Brock St. with a lot of character, tucked between its rustic, exposed brick walls. Musiikki specializes in whiskies, but what attracted me was its promise of live jazz every Monday night.
The jazz group—made up of Helena Hannibal, Eric Liu, John Torres, Spencer Evans, Alexander Tikhnenko, Brian Howell, and Ron Hackett—plays on a pocket-sized stage tucked away on the second floor.
At first, I felt like a fly on the wall—it’s a smaller bar and everyone inside seemed to know each other—but as soon as the six-piece band started doing their thing, I was spellbound. You could stroll past this bar on the street a million times without realizing what musical magic awaits inside. I went in with no expectations and left with a renewed love of jazz.
It made me wish I’d stuck with the alto sax after high school.”
—Nathan Gallagher, staff writer
“My favourite arts event I attended this year was the Dan Studio Series’ winter term production, Lost & Found. This show was a collection of four one-act pieces, all written by students. I genuinely loved each one, and I found them all to be well-written, well-acted, and well-staged.
I was completely engrossed in every moment of the show. Overall, immersing myself in student-made creative work was an enriching and valuable experience that will colour my time at Queen’s in a positive light.”
—Julia Harmsworth, staff writer
