Magnificent Seven Returns!

This time, it's al fresco.

Yes, after taking a break for the month of May, Magnificent Seven returns on Saturday, June 8th. That's just one week from today.

From 6-11pm, we'll bring you tons of great music and art out on the Machinery Row patio (202 2nd Ave. S). $5 gets you in the door. Free food, full bar with ID. Even with the venue change, the show is still all ages.

See art from:

• Julia Becker
• Halley Gallagher
• Plus! Art from Tyson Habein and Pablo Jara (of Level Up Tattoo) will be auctioned off during the evening.
• Plus-Plus! Come see local artists work on a collaborative art piece... and put in your bid.

Featured Musicians:

• Lady Maeyhem (acoustic original)
• Hydr8 (contemporary experimental)
• Parking Lot Astronauts (progressive instrumental rock)
• Risa Alvarez (fire eating!)
• Riverside Rising (Celtic rock)
• Mixtress Pendula (DANCE PARTY!)

Plus, you never know what extras might be added in the next week. Hosted by Joe Ryan and Charlie Maxwell and brought to you by Electric City Creative, we hope you'll come. (RSVP on Facebook!)

It'll be great fun, promise.

--
PS: Don't forget that the next night, June 9th, come see Hey Marseilles play on the Machinery Row patio at 8pm. Tickets are $10 in advance and $13 at the door, and are also available to buy online. All ages.

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.

Issue #7: ROCK MONSTER is here!

Yes, after long last, we finally have a new issue, and it's a big one.



What will you find?

- A profile on musician Ryan Johnson

- A profile on artist/musician/producer Corey Fisher

- Tyson Habein discusses the possibilities and current strides being made for hip hop in Montana

- Contributing photographer Seth Dahl presents his photo essay, "Colorado River"

- A photo roundup of our New Year, New Art party held January 25th

- February's First Friday Art Walk, with highlights including Jeff Dawson, Levi Johnson, Sterling Washington, Janice Oehlke, and Josh Wilkinson

- In Liner Notes, Sara Habein reviews both Dana Jo Forseth's Driven EP and Jonathan Ravenscroft's self-titled debut.

Do check it out!
TIP FOR VIEWING: Because this is a PDF file, it can sometimes be slow to load online. For best viewing, right click and 'Save link as' to your computer. It looks better viewed in Acrobat anyway!

Also, don't forget to RSVP for the Infinite Disposable book release party. It promises to be a lot of fun.

Until next time, thanks for reading.

Edited to Add: Print Editions are now available through MagCloud:

Electric City Creative Presents: NEW YEAR, NEW ART Silent Auction Art Party

Think you can't afford to buy art? Are your walls looking a bit uninteresting? Do you like discovering new things? SAY, we can help you with that!

Electric City Creative is hosting another art party, this time a silent auction featuring work by Great Falls artists. Minimum bids are starting very low, so everyone has a chance to go home with something great.

We'll have work available from:

- GOO
- Tyson Habein
- Corey Fisher
- Julia Becker
- David Mariani Jr.
- Ernesto Velazquez

And who knows what sort of extra goodies we'll have going on. Turn up and find out.

Bidding starts at 6pm and we'll have drink specials all night. Under 21? That's all right, too. Come have a soda and put in a bid. No cover.

Shortly before 9pm, we'll announce the high bidders for each work of art, and then the night transitions into Machinery Row's regular Open Mic Night, which always promises a good time.

If you haven't been to Open Mic before, now is the time to check it out. Regular performers include Joe Ryan, Dana Jo Forseth, Ryan Johnson, Jonny Ravenscroft and more. It's a fantastic night of music.

During Open Mic, we'll do a live auction of a collaborative piece of art from the artists, featuring an unusual canvas you'll just have to see...

RSVP on Facebook here.

You know you want to come. Tell your friends, come see some spectacular work, and enjoy the tunes. See you there.

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.

ISSUE #5: FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT (Spring 2011) is here!

(...to parrrr-ty!)


Hello, friends! Yes, our much hyped and much awaited fifth issue is here and available for your ocular pleasure. We are exceptionally proud of this one, as it features some outstanding content and is our largest issue yet at 50 pages.

What can you find this time around?

- PROFILES of artists GOO and Halley Gallagher

- GIG REVIEW: Star Anna & The Laughing Dogs at Machinery Row

- PHOTO EDITORIAL by Tyson Habein, "Soft Land."

- FIRST FRIDAY ART WALK coverage for March and May, featuring work at Taco Del Sol, My Viola Floral Studio, Inspire Portraits, and Warehouse Square.

- LINER NOTES: Reviewing RiverSide Rising's self-titled debut album

-HIGHLIGHTS from The Pioneer Woman (Ree Drummond)'s visit during Western Art Week, as well as notes on the Western Masters Art Show itself.

However, a word about that: Somehow in the madness of assembling our content, we've temporarily lost our photos from both Pioneer Woman and Western Art Week. We deeply regret this, as we saw several artists that we thought pushed the definition of what it means to be a "Western" artist, in ways that our readers might not expect.

What we promise to do is this: The moment we find these photos, we will do a special one-off post regarding both Pioneer Woman and the art itself. Consider it a "special edition," however delayed. Again, we apologize.


STILL! Now is the time to enjoy the content we have today. READ IT NOW!

Remember, PDF documents take a little while to load, and since this issue is 50 pages long, it may take a minute or so to appear on your screen.

Free digital versions are also available through MagCloud, where you can also order print editions for $10.

However!

If you attend our ART PARTY + GROUP SHOW tonight (May 20) at Machinery Row, a print edition can be yours for $9 and you'll save yourself any shipping costs. Quantities are limited at the party, so make sure to come in!

Thank you, as always, for reading.

-- Sara Habein
(Editor/Publisher)

So are you going?

Flyer courtesy of our friend GOO.

If you're on Facebook, you can RSVP here.

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.

CALL FOR ARTISTS!

We're throwing a party! To coincide with our 5th issue, Electric City Creative is hosting an art party and group show, May 20 at Machinery Row. We are looking for artists! Visual artists and writers of all kinds are invited to submit work for consideration. Deadline for submission on May 4th. Selected artists will be notified no later than May 7th. If selected your work needs to be ready for display no later than May 18th.

Here's what we need from you:

- Email us at electriccitycreative AT gmail.com with 'Group Show Submission' in the subject line.

- Tell us a bit about yourself: Your name, contact information, what type of artwork you do, and any website you might have.

- VISUAL ARTISTS: Attach up to 7 examples of your work. JPG or PDF files work best. Links to website portfolios are also fine.

- WRITERS: We would love to have a reading early on in the night. Slam poets, funny people, fiction writers, etc. — Show us what you've got! PDF, DOC (Word) or ODT (Open Office) files work best, or you can copy and paste into the body of the email. Or if you have a YouTube/Vimeo performance or a website, be sure to let us know.

All ages are encouraged to submit. Email us with any further questions. Thanks!