HOWL! Festival - WigStock, Art Around The Park, and More

by Derrick | August 28, 2005 at 09:53 am

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In my 10 years of living in New York City I have never
seen more people attend a single event at Tompkins
Square Park. An estimated 15,000 people showed up just for the Wigstock
segment of this year's HOWL
Festival - the annual eight day celebration of dance, theater, music, film,
poetry, visual and performance art in the East Village
put on by the Federation of East Village Artists
( FEVA).

20 Years of WigStock! It all started
“late one night in the spring of '84 a drunken group of friends, seeking more
diversions, closed the Pyramid Club and traipsed over to Tompkins Square
Park, six-packs in tow.
Brian Butterick, Michael "Kitty" Ullman, Wendy Wild, The
"Lady" Bunny and a few members
of the Fleshtones were horsing around in the bandshell when someone (no one
remembers who, it's all such a blur) came up with the idea of putting on a show
- a day-long drag festival - and calling it Wigstock. It was Bunny who was
foolhardy enough to take the idea seriously, going recklessly ahead and getting
the necessary permits”. (History
& Background)

Art Around
the Park - Imagine a 900 foot long, eight foot high ribbon of blank canvas
stretched along two sides of Tompkins Square Park
in the East Village. Add over 100 artists, hundreds
of gallons of paint, sculptural material of every description, and you get. . .
Art Around the Park (AAP).
AAP is a live-action painting event that has to be seen to be believed. Working
on assigned sections of the eight foot high wall of canvas, artists from the East Village
and beyond will transform the massive swath of white space into a riotous
explosion of color and creativity.

“Tompkins Square was
designated as one of the original five squares in the New York City plan. The park was developed in
1837 to attract investors and new homeowners further east. However, the park's
completion coincided with a collapse in the housing market, halting the
progression of stately homes at Lafayette
Street. Instead, tenements and worker housing
sprang up around Tompkins Square
and the neighborhood gained its identity as one of New York City's most diverse and colorful
immigrant and working class neighborhoods.” (History
& Background)