Shadow Art Fair defenders and detractors mix it up one last time

Like every year at this time, the Shadow Art Fair media juggernaut has begun in earnest. As of today, there are articles in The Ypsi Courier and The Current, as well as on AnnArbor.com. And, this afternoon, WEMU aired an interview that I’d done with local “All Things Considered” host Bob Eccles. (I think it went well, but you can listen below, and judge for yourself.) I’m more pleased with some of the pieces than others, but, there’s stuff to like even in the articles where the writers have gotten the date of the event wrong, and summed up our aesthetic by saying that we once “fed a massive cat its own waste.” (As much as I’d like it to be, it’s sadly not true.) It’s just cool, I think, that people still give a damn after seven years, and I’m incredibly thankful for that.

I should add that, while the press has been incredibly favorable, there have been a few negative comments, like the one reprinted here, which was left in the wake of the AnnArbor.com story this afternoon. I was kind of bummed out about it until a friend pointed out that the author may very well could be an amateur flautist known for performing at local Kiwanis Club functions. I don’t know if it’s the same person or not, but the thought that this woman, playing the flute with a Santa hat on, is our biggest detractor makes me incredibly happy… And I want to extend an olive branch, if she’s up for it, and offer her a table at the last Shadow, so that she can angrily critique what she sees around her to anyone who will listen, between costume changes and soulful performances of jazzified Christmas standards.

Of course, now that I think about it, this could all be a massive setup, and someone could have just appropriated the name of a very nice local flute player to make cracks about the Shadow Art Fair, hoping that I’d go for the bait, attack her by name on my website, make fun of her flute playing ability, and ultimately break her heart… Well, I’m not going to take the bait. I happen to love her “jazzy” rendition of Jingle Bells, regardless of what she may think of the Shadow Art Fair. And I’m extremely happy that she took the time to share her constructive criticism, which I just wished we’d received seven years ago, when we set out upon this little adventure of ours. If we had, maybe we could have set things right… fewer instances of us forcing animals to eat their own feces, and more smooth jazz. Who knows, the world may have been a better place.

Now, here, on a happier note, is that WEMU interview that I mentioned.

Speaking of interviews, some of us will also be in the air this Thursday evening at 6:30, with WCBN’s Mike Perini. If our previous on-air visits to Mike’s show are any guide, it should be fun.

UPDATE: I think I may have been right about that AnnArbor.com account having been a setup. In addition to the comment above, about the Shadow, there are only five other statements attributed to the account, and they were all left over the last 48 hours.