June Jubilee sets the tone for summer of fun

Kalamazoo opens its arms and invites southwest Michigan and beyond to celebrate the beginning of summer in grand fashion Thursday, June 6 through Sunday, June 9 at June Jubilee.

 

For many years Kalamazoo has celebrated the first Saturday in June but as the events kept multiplying the community decided to rename the event to reflect that it had outgrown its Super Saturday origins. Now more than a dozen events will take place across the downtown.

 

The fun begins with Dionysos Greek Festival, now in its 37th year. The festival that got its start in the basement of Theo and Stacy Skartsiaris's Greek restaurant Dionysos, grew to a one-day festival and then to three days as it has been for many years. The celebration of Greek food, music and dancing (including belly dancers) also has room for U2Zoo a U2 cover band on Friday night  and Candlebox on Saturday. The Greek Fest continues through the weekend, wrapping up on Saturday night. A full schedule is here. 

 

As always, art is a major part of the weekend. First, on Friday night there will be an Art Hop with exhibits in 27 spots. Two highlights are paintings by Victoria Lynn, a nationally exhibiting local artist, in the offices of Diekema-Hamann and the Barnabee Gallery at Powell Library will have surrealist photography by Tom Cummins. Art on the Mall also starts on Friday with the work of more than 85 local and regional artists who sell their original art and fine crafts in the two-day event.

 

On Saturday, the KIA Art Fair, a juried event sponsored each year by the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts will show work by more than 190 artists. An estimated 50,000 visitors are expected to turn out to Bronson Park this year for artwork in 13 different media.

 

Each year, one of the weekend's highlights is the annual Do-Dah Parade. Just about the only rule for the unstructured parade is to keep it silly. Parodies of a person, place or thing, even of June Jubilee,  are encouraged. This year the parade steps off at 11 a.m. Saturday.

 

These are some of the top drawing events for Kalamazoo's really big weekend. For a complete schedule, visit here.

 

Source: Downtown Kalamazoo Inc.

Photos courtesy Kalamazoo Institute of Arts
Art lovers delight in works at the annual Art Fair.