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HOMER, ALASKA'S ART DESTINATION
The Best Small Towns in the United States to Visit in 2023 - Homer, Alaska
By Suzie Dundas
The first time I saw Homer was after an eight-hour drive through the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge in a failed attempt to see moose, caribou, or grizzly bears. But when I arrived in Homer, passing vivid red, waist-high fireweed with the backdrop of the bright blue Cook Inlet and Lake Clark National Park’s towering Aleutian Range in the distance, I knew it was worth the trip.
At the far southern tip of Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, Homer is a town of two parts: the mainland town of around 6,000 people, which serves as the starting point for wildlife tours and fishing trips and is full of artists, oddballs, and free-spirited Alaskan hippies; and the Homer Spit, a four-mile-long stretch of land dotted with fresh seafood stands, shiplapped (and seaside) ice cream shops and art galleries, and driftwood-covered beaches ripe for beachcombing.
For many visitors to Alaska, Homer is a mere pit stop, a place to spend an hour while they wait for their water taxis to island resorts like Stillpoint Lodge. But in 2023, I recommend spending an extra day in Homer to visit the interactive Alaska Islands & Ocean Visitor Center, take a grizzly bear helicopter tour, paddle your way along the town’s rocky mainland coastline, or wet your whistle at local stops like Homer Brewing Company or nearby Bear Creek Winery (which has a very reasonable $5 tasting fee).
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Summer is the prime season to visit for the most lodging, dining, and activity options. The mid-August Salmonfest (just north in Ninilchik) is one of Alaska’s biggest music festivals, complete with global headliners. But the most diverse event is September’s Alaska World Arts Festival, offering two weeks of comedy shows and concerts, performances, art classes, workshops, and dance performances throughout more than 50 Homer venues.
Alaska World Arts Festival back for 4th year
By Michael Armstrong • September 7, 2022
Soniyae Stephens Reid rehearses for "Nice Moves," one of the Alaska World Arts Festival events for the festival starting on Friday. (photo provided)
After four years and a pandemic, the Alaska Worlds Arts Festival might have found its groove.
Started in 2019 by director and producer Sally Oberstein as Homer’s answer to the Edinburgh, Scotland, Fringe Fest, in 2020 the Alaska World Arts Festival went totally virtual. Last year it brought back some live events, and this year half the events will be live performances or workshops.
“It’s a mix,” Oberstein said Tuesday on a break from directing “Nice Moves,” a musical comedy she produced with Mike McKinney that opens the festival on Friday at the Mariner Theatre. “One of our goals is for people to meet each other and learn about different cultures and make world friendships — which is exactly what’s happening.”
The necessity of holding events virtually through the magic of Zoom and high-speed internet has proven a boon as the world emerges from two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Connecting people around the world with a live audience enables cultural interaction without the expense of travel and lodging.
“We’ve also learned some of the amazing things we can do. It’s so hard to bring all the people together in one place,” Oberstein said. “… If we were bringing all those people in, we would not be able to offer them for next to nothing or free.”
Many of the world arts fest events run starting at $10 and up. Adding up the individual fees shows how good a bargain the festival membership price can be. A festival membership costs $100, and includes admission to most events as well as a raffle ticket for two tickets by Alaska Airlines anywhere they fly. For example, art workshops by Lynn Marie Naden are $55.
“That’s a $55 class,” Oberstein said of Naden’s workshop. “You take another class and, boom (for the price of a membership), there you go to everything.”
Free to the public are Live-at-lunch concerts offered almost daily at Land’s End Resort, one of the world arts fest sponsors. At 7 p.m. Saturday, the Pratt Museum & Park holds a $125-a-head fundraiser, Jazz-Tat-Tat with Jeffery Lee Mills, but at noon Sunday he and other musicians offer a free noon concert. Other Live-at-Lunch concerts are noon Friday, Sept. 16, with Atz Lee and Nikos Kilcher at the Green Can and noon Sunday, Sept. 18, with the Bayside Buskers at Land’s End. Visiting Turkish musician Cem Dagtekin plays noon Saturday, Sept. 17, at Land’s End.
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​World arts fest also offers live events old school, with the cutting-edge 20th century technology of AM radio. In collaboration with KBBI Public Radio AM 890, a free, live poetry and prose reading with Alaska writers Rachel “Ray” Ball, Linda Martin, Jeremy Pataky and Marybeth Holleman is 6 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 21, at the Homer Public Library and also broadcast on KBBI. A virtual event, “Backstage Legends,” at 7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 16, is live on Zoom and also broadcast on KBBI.
Some events also will be recorded, but shown to a live audience, including "Austentatious," an improvised Jane Austen novel as seen at the Edinburgh Fringe that's shown at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 14, at the Homer Theatre. Oberstein said she saw "Austentatious" six times at the Fringe.
“I’m not a Jane Austen fan, but those guys are stunning,” she said.
Along the noon free concerts, several groups perform. Jeffrey Mills presents “Boomers Oldies but Goodies: Music of a Mature Generation” at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 13, at Alice’s Champagne Palace. Admission is $25 in advance, $30 at the door or free with a festival membership.
“We’re trying to hit as many different kinds of art genres and styles of art that attract different audiences,” Oberstein said. “We have a little rock ‘n’ roll, a little poetry. We hit the whole spectrum.”
Sometimes people ask her why they don’t have “fill in the blank,” she said, and Oberstein said she responds, “Good idea for next year. And then I say, ‘Would you like to volunteer to help?’”
Some traveling artists will visit. Tadeusz Pieta and Jolanta Surma from Poland offer art workshops form 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2-6 p.m. Monday, Sept. 12, at Homer Art & Frame. Those workshops are $200 each, but not official festival events. Oberstein said they’re advertising and including in the festival some workshops to help out arts organizations.
Over the next week Oberstein will be greeting visitors from Germany, New York, Italy and Poland.
“Those are people landing in Homer to love and meet our community,” she said. “… The woman who flew in yesterday from Spain, we had a sunny day, and she’s like ‘I want to move here already. Everyone is so friendly. … We get to share Homer with all these people.”
Oberstein’s big production will be “Nice Moves,” her comedy revue about the past 100 years of dance told through the adventures of Spirit of Dancing Past and four generations of a delusional family at odds with each other’s dance styles. The Spirit pops out of an exploding radio console to take them back in time.
“It’s almost a vacation for putting the festival together,” Oberstein said. “It’s the funnest job on the planet, but it’s a lot of work. I go into the theater and everybody’s bounding around on stage, putting colorful costumes on and having a good time.”
World arts fest opens with a gala from 2-4 p.m. Friday at the Homer Chamber of Commerce and Visitor Center and the premiere of “Nice Moves” at 6 and 8 p.m. Friday at the Mariner Theatre. It ends on Wednesday, Sept. 21, segueing into the Homer Documentary Film Festival starting Sept. 22.
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While festival memberships include free admission to festival events, registration is required to hold a space. For a full program, ticket information and registration, visit www.alaskaworldarts.org.
It’s all arts, all the time for Alaska World Arts Fest
By Michael Armstrong • August 28, 2019 5:30 am
Photo provided Members of Quixotic perform in this undated photograph.
The idea for the Alaska World Arts Festival came about with a long jet-plane conversation, said organizer Sally Oberstein.
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“I was sitting next to a guy on an airplane coming from Ireland,” Oberstein said. “He said, ‘For the rest of my life I will never do anything in August except attend the Edinburgh International Festival.’ I said, ‘Tell me about it.’”
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Known as the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the weeks long event held in late summer in Scotland’s capital city this year sold 556,000 tickets — more than Edinburgh’s population — with 250 daily shows. Homer might be a wee bit smaller, but in terms of acts and events, the World Arts Festival packs as much punch for its size.
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It starts next Friday, Sept. 6, with art gallery openings, jazz at Bunnell Street Arts Center, the KP Brass Band at the Alibi and two short plays at Pier One Theatre. Continuing through Sept. 19, it ends with the last of the Homer Documentary Film Festival and a big closing party at Alice’s Champagne Palace.
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After that plane conversation about the Edinburgh Fringe, Oberstein said she thought to herself, “Why don’t we have it here because we have so much going on. I started talking to people and they said, ‘It sounds like a great idea.’”
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With sponsorship from Land’s End Resort, KBBI Public Radio and the Homer Chamber of Commerce and Visitor Center, the Alaska World Arts Fest features main stage Mariner Theatre performances by Beatles tribute band the Fab Four, Quixotic, and Tom Bodett’s True Stories About Home.
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Oberstein said the Fab Four are considered a note-for-note perfection of Beatles performances, right down to the Paul McCartney persona playing left handed.
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“They’re supposed to be the best imitation Beatles group in the world,” she said.
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Quixotic returns to the lower peninsula after performances in Homer and at Salmonfest. Based in Kansas City, Missouri, the circus art, musical and multimedia group brings home Mica Thomas, born and raised here, its executive producer. Quixotic combines music, dance, circus acts, animated videos, fashion, costuming, sound and lighting into a grand fusion of performance art.
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Also coming back is another Homer-raised genius, Andrew Vait, playing in concert at Alice’s Champagne Palace.
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A writer and storyteller formerly of Homer and now living in Vermont, Bodett returns after eight years to the town that launched his career on KBBI with stories later broadcast on National Public Radio. He’s now featured on the national radio show “Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me.”
​Bodett’s show features storytellers from The Moth, the national spoken word storyteller series that has inspired local storytelling like Homer’s own Spit Takes. Bodett calls the show “a straight-up rendition of a Moth MainStage event.” He will be joined by The Moth veterans Peter Aguero and Dameon Wilburn, “Wait, Wait” producer Ian Chillag, and Anchorage artist, helicopter pilot and The Moth storyteller Amy Malouf.
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“This show is going to be amazing,” Bodett wrote in an email. “These folks are the real deal.”
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While Bodett told stories live and on the radio 35 years ago, he wrote that he thinks “the resurgence of stories as entertainment is a direct response to the digitization of our lives and relationships.”
“We’re more connected than ever with our devices, and in a less-human way than ever before,” he wrote. “We crave the organic experience of person-to-person connection without even knowing we’ve been missing it.”
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If people seek that connection, the Alaska World Arts Fest will give that to them in not only big stage productions, but intimate club performances, art and music workshops, talks and films. Performance artist Enzina Marrari does a piece at The Shop: Kachemak Bay Art Space. Nature photographer and writer Amy Gulick does a talk on her new book, “The Salmon Way.” Another writer, Kathleen Dean Moore, also speaks.
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World Arts Fest also includes traditional September events like the Homer Documentary Film Festival and the annual Burning Basket.
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Another former Homer performer, Jocelyn Shiro, returns with a dance workshop. Musicologist and musician Habib Iddrisu does an African drumming workshop and then performs with students at the SPARC. There will be children’s art, world art, dance by Alaska and Hawaiian Natives, fisher poets from Astoria, Oregon, and performers from the United States and around the world.
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“I’m just trying to make sure we hit everything,” Oberstein said. “… To be able to bring that kind of culture here and share it and just to show we have it is pretty fun. It’s more than fun. … It’s really rewarding.”
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Ninety activities will be free, and many others are priced at $15 and up. Land’s End Resort offers a festival special for two people of two nights at Land’s End, two dinners, two festival member badges, and a choice of tickets to one performance of the Fab Four, Quixotic and other events, all for $550. A grand festival pass for everything also is $550. A $25 member badge offers free admission to the Hula Dance Workshop , Theater Fringe Festival , An Evening of Comedy and International Spectacle of Featured Artists.