Octopus Studios on Powell St. seems unapproachable with its whitewash exterior and barred windows, but it was busy and humming inside with the Eastside Culture Crawl the weekend of November 15-17.

There was a DJ in the corner near the entrance and 16 artists installed in the two-storey, open plan studio—one of 85 buildings involved in the Eastside Culture Crawl this year. It had a diverse selection of artists—weekend and fulltime artists, graduates and students, and art teachers promoting public art classes. One artist adjusted flickering projections on the wall and others lingered near the booths, where ceramics, paintings, illustrations, leatherwork, and stringed instruments were exhibited beside each other.

The Eastside Culture Craw is focused in the area bound by Main Street, 1st Ave., Victoria Drive, and the Waterfront, and featured over 400 artists this year. As someone who doesn’t live in the area, or even as someone who does, the official map is a requisite in the hunt for the little studios many of us didn’t know where there.

Now an annual 3-day visual arts festival in November in which artists from the Eastside open their studios to the public, it began as a series of open studio fundraisers in the mid-90s. Paneficio Studios on Keefer St. held a fundraiser for Clayoquot Sound arrestees’ travel costs to Victoria – the series of logging protests that occurred over the summer of 1993 in Clayoquot Sound resulted in over 800 protestors arrested and many put on trial in front of the B.C. Provincial Court in Victoria.

Another fundraiser was held the following year to support Eastside artists with AIDS, and it was divided between Paneficio Studios and 1000 Parker St. Studio in order to host more work. It expanded the third year to include two more studios, Glass Onion and Apriori Studios, and the proceeds went to restoration following an Eastside neighbourhood fire. It expanded again the next year, with 45 artists and over 1000 attendees, and Eastside-based artists and founded board member Richard Tetrault named it the Eastside Culture Crawl.

While the Eastside Culture Crawl still seems imbedded in the Eastside where is began and continues to be focused, it is representative of the diverse communities of artists, both emerging and internationally recognized, currently working throughout Vancouver. I hope next year word about the event will spread further, as I think it is a show of Vancouver-based art more people should see.

For more information about the Eastside Culture Crawl or the Eastside Culture Crawl Society, visit them online. We hope to see you there next November.