Walking along Santa Barbara’s Garden Street, the sounds of machinery fill the air as artists rush to finish their projects before this weekend’s Summer Solstice Parade.
The city’s Summer Solstice Celebration, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, is set to begin this Friday and continue through Sunday.
At the Community Arts Workshop, artists fill the yard with an assortment of creatures and objects catered to fit the parade’s theme of “Flights of Fancy.”
According to Penny Little, the executive director, the theme was chosen with input from the community, who suggested ideas during different workshops. In choosing the theme, organizers looked for something they felt allowed for a wide range of ideas and creativity.
“What is ‘Flights of Fancy’? It could be your imagination, it could be something with wings, it can be so many different things,” Little said.
During the past month, the workshop has served as a hub for artists to work on costumes, props or floats. The workshop also tries to support artists by supplying them with materials or anything else they need.
One of the floats was made by Irene Ramirez, a graphic designer and educator from Santa Barbara City College. She joined the parade two years to help a friend but decided to come back last year and build her own piece — a giant root beer float.
This year, Ramirez is building a giant flying pig with a gold crown and wings, which will be attached to a basket to look like a hot air balloon.
In designing the piece, Ramirez tried to use materials that could be recycled to give the float its pink color. The body of the pig is made from chicken wire and paper mâché.
The body of the pig is covered with various pink objects, including old clothes, pieces of fabric, and other objects that friends and other artists in the workshop have donated. Some of those include a pink Barbie car, dolls, and a pink toilet tree ornament.
“People started bringing me pink things [like] little shoes,” Ramirez said. “Just all kinds of crazy, wild stuff. Some of it we can just paint pink, and it kind of just went from there.”
Another of the artists, Daniel Elmer Landman, was convinced by a friend of his to join the parade. Landman runs the Fine Line Gallery at La Cumbre Plaza.
For his float, he is working on a piece he calls the Ride of Freya, a float that will feature a Pegasus and a rider.
The float is made from recycled cardboard sculpted into the shape of a Pegasus, a winged horse.
In designing his float, Landman said he wanted to make it obvious that the project was made of cardboard but still had the form of a mythical creature — allowing the audience to use their imagination.
Some artists decided to do something different from the traditional float.
Mae Logan, who said she has been going to the celebration since she was kid, always liked the idea of building something that looked like a murmuration, where a flock of starlings move as one in the sky.
“I always wanted to do a flock of birds, and I thought, ‘What is cooler than a flock of birds in a murmuration?’” Logan said. “So, we started brainstorming ideas of how to make a murmuration work.”
“There are no motors, there are no engines. It’s just people, and we need more people to do that. Those people can arrive from now until Saturday. They can arrive Saturday morning, and then we can put them in the parade,” Morrison said.
The final idea involved a series of mylar strips in the shape of birds set up in a sort of net that will be controlled by parade staff.
Ahead of the event, Riccardo Morrison, the artistic director for the workshop, said the parade still needs people to help pull the floats.
The parade, which is set to start at noon Saturday, will begin at the workshop at 631 Garden St. and continue to Alameda Park.
The Summer Solstice Celebration will be located at Alameda Park and is free to the public. The event will include live music, food and vendors, along with a fun zone for kids.
A beer garden also will be available to attendees age 21 or older.
The celebration will begin Friday from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. and continue on Saturday from noon to 8 p.m. The last day of the festival will be Sunday, from noon to 6 p.m.
To learn more, visit the official website here.
