Ice cream will be churned and cow chips will fly Saturday outside the Okotoks Art Gallery (OAG) at the Station Cultural Centre. The parking lot between the Station and the Okotoks Museum and archives as well as the lawn outside the OAG will be bristling with activity in the afternoon as part of the Olde Towne Okotoks Country Fair.
Out on lawn the fair patrons will have their chance to get their licks in with some old-fashioned ice cream making.
“We’ve got the new yet still old style crank machines,” Andrea Spiers the gallery’s visitor services specialist said. “People will have to crank the ice cream in order to get a taste test.
Yes, a little work is involved to get a cool and tasty treat but Spiers assured participants they wouldn’t have to crank long to earn their ice cream. Other things on the gallery grass will include a popcorn cart and an always-popular petting zoo featuring animals from Mrs. Mundell’s Kuddly Country Kritters.
A country fair just wouldn’t seem right without some traditional carnival games and Kathy Coutts of the Okotoks Museum and Archives confirmed they would be found this Saturday out in the adjacent parking lot.
“Cow chip tossing is something the museum has been doing for the last three years or so,” Coutts explained. “As much as I don’t want to spoil things for those who haven’t been down and are expecting real cow chips I have got to tell them they might be disappointed. For hygienic reasons we don’t use real cow chips. The one we use are made out of foam and we spray-paint them to give them the appearance of cow chips.”
Coutts confirmed, real or not, the farmyard objects fly well giving kids and grown-ups alike the chance hurl them at a target in hopes of wining a prize. Another game being set up for the fair is the milk can ball toss, which has been played at carnivals and other exhibitions about as long as there have been milk cans.
Because fair day is a first Saturday of the month the OAG is having its regular members art sale not at the gallery but at the Rotary Performing arts Centre (RPAC).
Spiers explained the event is happening away from the gallery not for fair considerations but because that’s where the artists want it to be.
“It was just a way for us to have to have another venue for artists to show their work,” she said of the initial First Saturdays sale at RPAC back in the spring. “It was only going to be a one time thing but then they all liked it so much, they asked me if we could keep going with it every First Saturday and I said, ‘of course why not.’
The sale is set for the RPAC’s basement community room but that’s not the only place at the facility where you’re likely to find art for purchase.
“Sometimes if it’s nice outside some of the artists go out on the lawn too,” Spiers said. “They try to draw some more people into the sale that way.”
Saturday perspective art buyers can expect such treasures as the metal and stained glass work of Okotoks own Shirley Paradis as well as the landscape and wildlife pictures of the husband and wife team of Mark and Anne Durocher-Weston.
“Last Wednesday we went to Kananaskis along Highway 40,” Anne said. “We saw some amazing bears. We sat there for about an hour and half with just this one grizzly and two cubs. Then later on in the day we saw another grizzly with one cub, some black bears and two moose both with calves.”
She and Mark, who operate under the name of Sheep River Photography, will have pictures from that very memorable day at the 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. sale Saturday at RPAC. The OAG and the Okotoks Museum are running their outdoor activities from noon to 4 p.m.
