The Canal Convergence 2016 was a spectacular 4-day celebration of art, water, and light along the Scottsdale Waterfront!

Large crowds descended upon the canal this past weekend all ready to explore the arts, participate in art making, and have their senses engaged! The Scottsdale Public Arts and Salt River Project once again did a brilliant job activating the Arizona Canal between Soleri and Marshall Way bridges for the fourth consecutive year. It was great to see such diversity and fascinating interactive artworks by local and international artists, which highlighted 12 large-scale artworks.

Several awesome fun family-friendly activities, art-making stations and live performances filled our trip to this year’s Canal Convergence that included an impressive list of artists: Bruce Munro, whose Blooms lite up the canal with flowers, followed by a musical and light stroll through MICRO–Double Helix by Purring Tiger combining music, lights and dangling globes which floated along the bridge.

Highlights included a wonderful Billboard Mindscape by Edina Tokodi, a river’s passing, along with "Artist@Work" demonstration areas where we made a replica of a mini Spiraling Droplet, after walking the canal enjoying Aphidoidea’s Spiraling Droplets, which dazzled in the water as they floated along. The Soleri Bridge offered Light Origami created by KAZ Shirane, which allowed patrons to go inside the geodesist diamond filled with mirrors and changing lights and was one of the most popular installation of the event. As we walked along the bridge we enjoyed impromptu dance performances, live music and a great table where visitors could make a lovely paper cranes with local artist Thuong Nguyen.

So much fun sharing secrets with strangers at Christopher Jagmin’s Your Secret is Safe with Me which encouraged patrons to write down a secret then give it to a stranger along with some wonderful coloring sheets for kids and adults to enjoy! We had an incredible time with Design RePublic Mobile Studio and the lovely Lindsay Kinkade, learning about designing stencils. Then we were able to choose the stencil we wanted to create, next we cut out our chosen stencil then used paint to create a wonderful print that we were able to take home! Lastly we checked out Amy Sansbury “True Local Time”, with a sun dial collaborated to the exact time for the entire weekends celebration, as well as a wonderful craft of making our own dun dial at home.

Huge thank you to Scottsdale Public Art and artists for putting this amazing art-filled weekend together! Every year Canal Convergence pushing boundaries and expanding our ideas of art, looking forward to see what 2017 holds! *All images courtesy and copyright of Scottsdale Public Art, participating artists and Nicole Royse.