Night\Shift

Night\Shift is a late-night arts and culture festival held in downtown Kitchener and is similar to Toronto’s Nuit Blanche. During last year’s event, my friend Darin and I did the bike face photo booth. It was a ton of fun, but I was looking forward this year to checking out some of the exhibits instead of operating one of them.

I started out at the Tricity Stopgap Pop Up art show. I had a couple pieces in the show and I needed to be there to document some of the night. There were 64 artists that took part, mostly from around town, but there were a few from beyond our region. My pieces for this show were two black and white photos that I’ve always wanted to get blown up so I figured this was as good a time as any to do it. I was nervous about how they might show since I just scanned them with a cheap flatbed and blew them up to two feet wide, but I was quite happy with how they looked in the end.

Downtown had a ton to see and spread from the Centre in the Square (where I finally got to see the Lynn Cohen exhibit) all the way down to City Hall. I hiked around to a number of venues downtown, including Jennifer Gough’s exhibit at the cenotaph, nik harron’s set up in Hall’s Lane, as well as a bunch that were held in and around City Hall.

The event ran until 2:00 am. I didn’t last that long—might’ve been the late-night burrito from Holy Guacamole—but am happy I made it out to see how much artistic talent this region has.