Night of Artists
Night of Artists (NOA) is a festival of art and music, and is Phil Alain’s little dream that grew.
Having begun in a St. Albert community hall some twenty-one years ago, it has been the
growing and evolving brain-child of an enterprising artist who seeked out a way to not only promote his own art, but to support the arts on a larger scale, including musicians and other artists. Over the years it has outgrown and moved on from various locations, pulling it away from its home city of St. Albert, into Edmonton and finally returning back home, to The Enjoy Centre. It did grow, for a time, to be a national festival, with NOA events taking place in 13 cities across the country, but with a young family, and the commitment requirements of Mural Mosaics, there came a point where Phil decided it was time to downscale NOA to an Edmonton area event only.
This year’s event took place the weekend of March 16-18. The event included the release of
this year’s issue of NOA magazine, a “showcase of the arts” that has accompanied NOA events
since 2004. The release included the unveiling of the cover art. This year’s winning art for the
cover, as chosen by vote, was by artist, Jared Robinson.
While previous years, NOA had two gala evenings, this year, it was reduced to one ticked gala event on Friday evening and two daytime art walks, with free admission. The new format was well received. “The evening gala had almost 800 people in attendance and the daytime walk through crowd was well over 2000 people,” Phil tells us, “Overall it was a wonderful weekend.”