*A James Street Arts Bonanza * By DON FRASER

Bethany Scholl seemed captivated by the connections layered one over the other.

At Friday’s James Street Night of Art, local artist Marinko Jareb beamed a documentary video about graffiti artists turned professional onto a brick wall. This surface is where you might see tags scrawled. But in this project, participants electronically draw graffiti markings onto the video, using a screenwriter.

“It’s so cool that the project is outside, projected onto a wall like that,” said Scholl, a 23 year old Brock University student. “As it gets darker outside, the video gets more and more vivid.”

The fourth annual free event was presented by the St. Catharines and Area Arts Council. It closed off a section of James Street for an evening of music, readings, dance, theatre and media artistry. There were 22 performances staged at 17 different venues between 6 pm and 9 pm.

Scholl and others praised the buzz generated by the evening of creative sound, movement and light.

“St. Catharines has such potential to be more and more artist based,” she said, “And soon, they’ll be building an arts centre around the corner. I like that they’re starting the momentum already and getting things established like this.”

“It’s only going to get better.”

At Stella’s restaurant nearby, Carolyn Currey of Stevensville warmed up for her calming dance Street Lullaby that explores themes of God’s peace in one’s busy life.

“It’s an outreach type of dance, where we’re trying to portray peace from God to the audience,” said Currey, a dancer with the Christian troupe Soli Deo Gloria Ballet, based in Stevensville, “I think James Street Night of Art is really interesting.”

“So many different types of artists can come together and show off the arts as a whole.”