Embracing the creative chaos, California Institute of the Arts hosted its second annual “MAYhem” festival on campus on Saturday.
Through three days of performances, exhibitions and lectures from Friday to Sunday, CalArts students, families and the general public could experience CalArts’ unofficial open house firsthand.
Paired with the 46th annual World Music and Dance Festival, ensembles performed throughout campus, including: PlenazoTribe, who recently performed with Bad Bunny during the Super Bowl LX halftime show; Gender Wayang; World Percussion Ensemble; Persia Electric; Grupo Pagode CalArts; Indian Music Ensemble; Djembe & Dunun Ensemble; African Music & Dance; Coyote Makes a World; and Balinese Gamelan “Burat Wangi.”
In addition to the live performances, CalArts alumni, including “The Lion King” director Rob Minkoff, shared insights with attendees about trajectories in the various worlds of art.
“Right here we have local vendors, and it’s open to whoever basically wants to do a table and sell things at the market. We have people who are local to the community, we have internal people, we have staff, we have faculty, we have all levels of community members participating,” said Karolyn Heimes, director of alumni engagement at CalArts. “In our cafe, we have a World Music Festival themed lunch entree, which is super exciting.”
According to Heimes, the menu for Saturday included an African chicken skewer over spicy jollof rice, in addition to coleslaw and fried cassava.
“We have a special themed entree to go with the festival. We also have open studios, which are throughout the buildings. We have studios tucked away into different places. There’s a lot of really good art, and you get to see the spaces that the artists work in. We have Rob Minkoff coming, in addition to an African concert in the evening.”
Heimes, who has worked at CalArts for nearly 15 years, believes in the incentive of hosting events for the public to enjoy.
“We’re kind of doing the same thing as last year. We always have so much going on, that it makes sense to market it all together and try to bring a bigger audience to campus. Last year, we had about 1,000 people on campus. The concerts that are sold out for tonight — one is just under 200 seats, another is about 100. With the ticketed events alone, we’re looking at around 500 people,” Heimes said.
Heimes encourages the community to learn more about the institution, recognizing the hard work students have executed throughout the year.
“This is a really fun time of year. The students have been working hard all year long in their various creative practices, and it’s really fun, as well, because you get to experience multiple types of art forms, a legendary animation talk, music, dance, visual arts, theater, all on one day and all for free,” Heimes said. “We hope that the Santa Clarita community can come out. This is what we do best — the arts. I know sometimes we’re not out in the community as much as we could be, but we’resuper happy to have the community come visit us.”
Among those who came to visit was Angel Cuevas, whose photo booth company Boho Booth is based in Glendale.
“We’ve been in business now for about two and a half years. Coming into the photo booth industry, we needed to try and make something different out of it. We wanted to go for something that was a vintage-style look. Our other photo booth is actually a wood mirror one, as well,” Cuevas said.
Attendees could receive a magazine-cover print when using the glamor booth setup, as Cuevas called it.
“I like electronics, and the hardest part is getting it to work smoothly. I’ve worked a lot on trying to get it to work smoothly myself, and my wife has done a lot of the back end work on how to work with customers. She’s good with people; I’m good with the equipment,” Cuevas said.
