Waukegan to hold annual Dandelion Wine Festival

Celebrating summer and the arts, the ninth annual Dandelion Wine Fine Arts Festival will run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at 39 Jack Benny Drive.

Organized by the Waukegan Park District's cultural arts division, the festival honors one of Waukegan's favorite sons, Ray Bradbury, who wrote the novel "Dandelion Wine." The festival reflects how his book celebrated summer and celebrated freedom just as music and art celebrate freedom, said Claudia Freeman, superintendent of cultural arts.

The event also remembers Jim Harrington, an international painter and Waukegan artist, who in 1999 suggested the city offer a fine arts festival. The fine art festival was combined as part of the city's Beach Fest in 2000. Harrington died shortly after the first festival, Freeman said, and the decision was made to create a separate fine arts festival to honor Bradbury and Harrington.

"Our hope is to keep his dream alive," she said.

The festival celebrates art, music, drama, and dance through art demonstrations, musicians, dance demonstrations from the Jack Benny Center, the Rhythm Academy and Waukegan School children, theater workshops, poets/storytellers, and an open microphone program.

"The open mic allows people who can do different things to express themselves," Freeman said.

Artists of all mediums and artists from the Lake County Art League display and sell artwork at this event. Fine crafters also have been invited to show and sell their items.

Opening this year's festivities will be the Waukegan Municipal Band. After the band performance, Freeman said everyone is invited to see the renovated Bowen Park reopen at a 11 a.m. ceremony.

The theme this year is "The Sounds of Waukegan." Those who take part in the community art project will create a rhythm "instrument" for the community drum circle that will begin at 3 p.m.

Among performances planned, the Dave Hibbard Jazz Quartet will perform from 1 to 2 p.m. Latin Street Dancing of Chicago will offer dance lessons and will dance with the crowd from 11 a.m. to noon and 12:30 to 1:30 p.m.

To add another theatrical element to the festival, the Second City Training Center will offer two one-hour improvisation workshops at 1 and 2:15 p.m. All participants must be 15 years old or older.

The workshops require preregistration, and there is a limit of 15 participants per workshop. Sign up by calling (847) 360-4740.