Downtown Mobile’s Cathedral Square district turns into an open-air gallery this weekend as the annual Arts Alive! festival runs Friday through Sunday, April 8–10, with free admission and a schedule that stretches well beyond the usual art-walk format.
Temporal City Turns Empty Buildings Into Exhibits
The most ambitious piece of the weekend is Temporal City, a three-day festival-within-the-festival that places time-based and durational media artwork inside abandoned and unused buildings within a three-block radius of Cathedral Square. Ten artists were invited to create site-specific projects for the duration of the festival, including Lillian McKinney, Joe Hobbs, Adam Taylor, Ryan Jetten, Jimmy Lee, Riley Brenes, A. Friend and Elizabet Elliott.
Organizers describe the experience as a scavenger hunt: an artist-designed map of downtown marks every installation along with scheduled artist talks and tours, letting patrons plot their own route through the derelict spaces. Maps are available throughout the festival, and guided tours and public conversations with the artists are scheduled across all three days.
Fashion, Film and Wearable Art
The weekend also brings a full slate of events in and around the square:
- Stingray Sam screening — Friday, April 8, 7 p.m., Cathedral Square. The South Alabama Film Festival hosts a free outdoor showing of Cory McAbee’s episodic musical space-western, narrated by David Hyde Pierce, which premiered at Sundance in 2009.
- Blue Velvet Studio wearable-art exhibit — Friday, April 8, 6–9 p.m. at 709 Dauphin Street during the LoDa ArtWalk, featuring costumes, corsets, breastplates and headdresses by more than a dozen local artists including Karen Cassidy, Carrie Cole, Lucy Gafford and Lillian McKinney. Visitors are asked to bring pet food or supplies for the Jackson County animal shelter.
- Cathedral Square fashion show — Saturday, April 9, 4:30 p.m., staged during the festival.
- Lunatix & Co. debut fashion show — Sunday, April 10, 1 p.m. in Cathedral Square, showcasing the new boutique’s line from its 662 Springhill Avenue location, emceed by William Masters.
All events are free and open to the public. Organizers encourage attendees to pick up a Temporal City map early in the weekend to catch every installation before the sites close Sunday night.