Wanaka's Festival of Colour sparked into life on the lakefront yesterday morning with the opening of Pouwhenua - Billboards: Markers on the Land.
I was surprised and amused to see a friend, one of several local "celebrities" immortalised by "nomadic" artist Fleur Elise Noble, carrying a bright yellow duck under his arm.
I'd met Noble on Saturday, before she'd done Ed Taylor's duck, and she put me in the picture about some of the others in her work, such as Wanaka farming identity Elsie Kane, festival co-ordinator Lindsay Schofield and a young child called Gypsy.
"I'm just popping them in as they came along. But I also scouted out some local celebrities at the retirement village," she said.
Noble's Two Dimensional Life of Her opens at the Luggate Hall today and it also promises to be weird and trick people.
"It is all about trying to create a space where people can be in an active creation ... That will allow people to see art as a process, rather than a finished product," Noble said.
The festival goes on tour to Cromwell today and I hope Elixir's lunchtime concert at the Cromwell Memorial Hall has less distraction than that yesterday, at the Crystal Palace in Wanaka.
The chamber music trio of Kate Lineham, Moira Hurst and Rachel Thomson, personable, cheerful performers, won over their mostly silver-topped audience of about 150 by boldly continuing in the face of much adversity.
I am not sure what to mention first: the air-conditioning unit, helicopters passing overhead, large trucks outside or the whirring noise from the sound system that could have been a tempest of moths trapped in a light shade.
"You are allowed to laugh," Moira Hurst told the audience at one point. Laugh we did.
I think this fourth festival of arts is already bringing out the best in all of us.
Today's programme
10.30am, Lloyd Geering, Crystal Palace (Aspiring Conversations)
11am, 1pm, 7pm: Two Dimensional Life of Her, Luggate Hall (theatre)
Noon: Elixir, Cromwell Memorial Hall (music)
Noon: Richard Nunns, Crystal Palace (music)
1pm, 6pm: Passing Wind, Queenstown Memorial Hall (theatre)
2.30pm: Kate De Goldi, Glenn Colquhoun, Crystal Palace (Aspiring Conversations)
6.30pm: Riverside Drive, Hawea Flat Hall (theatre)
7pm: C'Mon Black, Lake Wanaka Centre (theatre)
7pm: Guru of Chai, Cromwell Memorial Hall (theatre)
7pm, 8pm: Hotel, Edgewater Resort (theatre)
8.30pm: Bellbirds, Crystal Palace (music)
