The Official State of Electric City Creative

After long last! Greetings, all. If you are following us on Facebook or reading the Hot Ticket, you know that Electric City Creative has not been entirely inactive over the past year, despite the lack of updates on this site. What we have done is shift focus. Because you know that we are a staff of two (Sara Habein and Tyson Habein), our various other creative and professional endeavors have kept us from being able to properly devote our attention to even a quarterly magazine publishing schedule.

Tyson is currently managing two musicians: Joe Ryan and Ryan David Johnson, in addition to working on his own art and poetry. Sara is writing for Persephone Magazine and Word Riot, as well as writing her usual book reviews over at Glorified Love Letters. She is also editing a novel.

We also published a collection of flash fiction and photography, Infinite Disposable, last year. It is available for purchase through the Nouveau Nostalgia page and also at Powell's Books. Roughly 50 copies remain, so when they're gone, they're gone.

So that's what we're doing personally. Under the banner of Electric City Creative, we have sent the magazine off to hibernate. We're not saying we'll never publish another magazine, only that it's on hold while we concentrate on community arts organization and awesome party-throwing. If you've been paying attention at all, you know we've started a new (nearly) monthly showcase: Magnificent Seven.

Sponsored by Electric City Creative, hosted by Joe Ryan, and with assistance from other local businesses, Magnificent Seven brings together (up to) seven different performers, a handful of visual artists, free food, door prizes and a bar (not free, sorry), all for $5. So far, the event has been at the Montana Actors' Theater, but with the warm weather approaching, we will be moving to the Machinery Row patio. The next Magnificent Seven showcase will be in June on the Machinery Row patio, as we use the month of May to regroup and make the transition. The showcase will still be all-ages.

Past performers have included Dan Dubuque, Ryan David Johnson (once on his own, and once with drummers Evin Mitchell and Josh Wilkinson, under the name "Ghost in Stereo"), Jeffrey Scolley, Saif Alsaegh, Hell City Kitty, The Helligans, The Lucky Valentines, Madison Johnson, Emily Busby, Risa Alvarez, Joe Ryan with Melanie Hauer, and oodles more.

We hope you are as excited as we are about the longterm potential of this showcase. We believe that by providing a variety of performers and pairing them with visual art, we can show the public just how much Great Falls has to offer, in addition to making all these different creative endeavors more accessible. Our original mission, even with the magazine, has always been to show that enjoying art isn't scary or necessarily high-brow, and that punk rock can co-exist with classical. So far, the response to our first three showcases has been good, and we thank you for coming.

In other Electric City Creative news, we will also be presenting other events around Great Falls, outside of Mag 7. They might be poetry, music, art auctions, or anything else that strikes our fancy. We will let you know as they are scheduled.

Because of all these different events, this site will be updated far more frequently as we try to keep everyone in the loop in as many promotional venues as possible. Be sure to follow us on both Facebook and Twitter (where our username is still @ElectricCityMag, but ElectricCityCreative is too long, so for now, it stays that way). The Facebook page will probably update more often, if we're honest.

Thank you for your patience, and we look forward to seeing you out and about.

Art Party + Group Show Roundup!

(3 year olds are not as impressed with the art show prep process. That's GOO's work hanging behind him.)

10 am on May 20, we met up with GOO, Butchard M, Rachel Kaiser, Halley Gallagher and David Mariani Jr. to set up for our party at Machinery Row. Since everyone had done other shows before, the process of finding the right wall space and the actual hanging went fairly quickly. Also, a big thank you is due to Tim Peterson at the Row for letting us have more or less free reign when it came to nails in the walls and posts, as well as temporarily moving signs.


(Rachel Kaiser)


(Butchard M and promo posters for the upcoming INFINITE DISPOSABLE from our micropress, Nouveau Nostalgia.)


(Quick cell phone pic of our merch. We sold several copies of the magazine, several copies of FLAWED MACHINE, and all but one of our Nouveau Nostalgia t-shirts. The last t-shirt went to Chuck the bar manager.)

People began to show up right after 6pm, and the crowd fluctuated, but was also at times quite large. We're absolutely thrilled that we had such a great turnout and response to the work on the walls. I believe that nearly everyone sold at least one painting, and we even bought GOO's catfish painting ourselves. Whenever we get our own gallery space here in town, you can be sure we'll have it on display as part of our permanent collection.



We also had Floods play a short set early on in the night. GOO, Butchard M and Shaun Carrier comprise the band, and the crowd seemed to dig their instrumental fuzz-rock.



Later on in the night, GOO, Rachel and Halley were doodling on a piece of paper along with a couple of other people, and the result ended up tacked up inside the bar as well:



We are looking forward to doing more events like these, and Machinery Row was absolutely fantastic to work with. You can see a few more photos of the event on Tyson Habein's flickr page, and we may put up others soon.

Also, we still have a few copies of the magazine ($9) and FLAWED MACHINE ($5) left, so if you're local and want to save yourself the shipping, shoot us an email at electriccitycreative AT gmail DOT com.

Electric City Creative Art Party + Group Show

Electric City Creative wants to show off some of the great, creative work happening around Great Falls, and what better way to do so than throwing a party?

Featuring the work of:

GOO
Halley Gallagher
Rachel Kaiser
Butchard M
David Mariani Jr.
Nouveau Nostalgia: A Micro-Press

Music by Floods

May 20th also coincides with the release of Electric City Creative's fifth issue covering Spring 2011, and we will have real! live! print copies for sale during the party. Print editions purchased at the party are $9 and ones ordered online will be $10.

Not to mention:
The DJ (For all the talk we've done in past issues about dance parties, how could we not have a DJ? Ready your requests, friends.)

$2 pints of Great Falls Select

Delicious pizza

This is an ALL AGES show until 10pm, but ECC will be there until closing time.

If you're on Facebook, you can officially RSVP here. Or just give a shout in the comments or say hello via Twitter. We're so online-omnipresent, it's ridiculous.

Come see the art, come have something to eat, come meet some new people. Be there or be somewhere considerably less awesome. Tell your friends.

Electric City Creative

Electric City Creative - An online arts and culture magazine coming to the Great Falls, Montana area, July 20th 2010. Stay tuned!

(Also, please bear with us and our placeholder user image!) Our official logo is now in place.


In the meantime, check out our old haunt, SPOKE(a)N(e) Magazine