RSS
Home
Da Vinci Days, annual Corvallis summer festival, lives up to its name
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
Kinetic Sculpture Parade at da Vinci Days fuses art, technology, and revelry
Da Vinci Days, a unique three-day festival celebrating art, science, and technology in Corvallis, Oregon, lives up to its ambitious name. This annual festival, which took place this year from July 17 - 19, is awe-inspiring, well-organized, and action-packed. You simply can not see and hear everything that is going on, but whatever you see, you'll be enriched and rejuvenated.
Da Vinci Days, of course, is named for Leonardo da Vinci, the Italian polymath, scientist, mathematician, engineer, anatomist, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician, and writer. If you are any of these things, or aspire to be a "Renaissance man" or woman, you will love this festival. Offered the third weekend in July of every year, da Vinci Days features an abundance of musical, artistic, engineering, scientific, and technological research events to stimulate the creative juices of most everyone. Children love the hands-on activities and prospective college students can talk to engineering and science college students at Discover OSU (Oregon State University, a top research institution in Corvallis) and at various open lab events on campus. More information is available at the festival website: www.davinci-days.org.
One of our favorite events was the Kinetic Sculpture Parade (see photo above), which happens every year. Snaking through this friendly college town were outrageous 3-D kinetic sculptures on wheels, painted beautifully and powered by smiling costumed adults, pedaling like crazy. Townspeople and festival goers lined the streets for blocks, and music, bicyclists, and electric cars were also part of this spectacular engineering and artistic event. We visited Green Town, an area filled with sustainable products and projects, the Robotics Tournament, where local high school teams (and even one from Portland's Riverdale High) competed with their student-designed and built robots, and heard great music from multiple sound stages. The chalk art exhibition, which covered sidewalks for several blocks, was fabulous too.
[Above photo: High school students' robots compete at da Vinci Days]
We managed to walk downtown and take in a few short films from the da Vinci Film Festival, now a separate event. They were ambitious, creative indie films. Then, back to the festival, we wandered the beautiful OSU campus and visited the atmospheric and oceanographic research open house, as well as an open lab for Electrical Engineering where a graduate student explained a research project to harness electricity from ocean waves (wow!). Wave energy is apparently where wind energy was thirty years ago, and OSU is in on the ground floor. Now, there was a daVinci moment for you.
The internationally known group Ladysmith Black Mambazo performed, and there was even a Poetry Slam event on Sunday. There's lots of parking and a huge outdoor food court offers American and ethnic foods.
Only a little over an hour from Portland, this festival is a must for creative Oregonians who want to broaden their horizons. Put it on your calendar now - da Vinci Days, third weekend in July 2010.
If you are a parent of a prospective Oregon State student, this is a perfect festival to introduce him or her to the university. You might even see Leonardo da Vinci himself. We did - strolling the festival grounds in full Renaissance costume.
.jpg)
[Example of beautiful chalk art from da Vinci Days]
Photos by Betty Li Tobin, copyright 2009.
If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy other articles about artistic collaboration at:
www.examiner.com/x-16045-Portland-Writing-Examiner
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
.jpg)
