The second edition of the Re:Birth Art and Music Collaboration will showcase the work of Central Iowa artists during the first three weekends of January in downtown Ames. 

The multi-week event will feature over 30 visual artists with a gallery showing at Design on Main and more than 20 bands, songwriters, and poets with performances at the Iowa Music Store and DG’s Tap House. While most festivals focus on one of the fine arts at a time, Re:Birth founder Garrett J. Adams hopes to show Ames residents everything their local arts community has to offer.

“This show brings together both the visual aspect of art and the music side [of art] and shows that they draw a lot of the same parallels,” Adams said.

Adams was inspired to start Re:Birth after attending weekly open mic nights held by the now-defunct Ames Progressive. Participants were encouraged to share a wide range of art from songs to short stories in a very open and accepting environment.

“If it wasn’t for [the Ames Progressive] and that openness, I wouldn’t have realized how comfortable, great and diverse our art community is here in Ames,” Adams said. “I wanted to start putting something together where people who didn’t realize [that] could come for one weekend and just see all of it.”

As a way of carrying on the mission of the Ames Progressive, Adams held the first Re:Birth exhibition in June of last year. While he considered the two-day event to be a success, he decided to expand the winter edition from one weekend to three, in order to maximize attendance and feature more artists.

While many of the artists to be featured at Re:Birth have already established themselves in the Ames art community, the festival will also feature a sizable crop of newcomers. Pieces by artists who have been featured at festivals and galleries across the state will hang side by side with the work of artists who are showing their work for the first time.

“We’re putting them next to each other just to show that we’re all in peers in what we do,” Adams said. “I want artists to feel that we’re kind of providing a space for them to feel comfortable to showcase something that they’re holding back or maybe that they’ve been wanting to do.”

In addition to encouraging new artists to contribute, Adams encourages those who have been making art for some time to try a new approach to their craft.

Charlie Vestal, an Ames singer-songwriter who performs under the name Flavor Basket, played at the first Re:Birth. Adams persuaded Vestal to put together a setlist of songs based around a cohesive theme, a departure from his usual strategy of planning shows.

“I had never thought to have a theme to my set,” Vestal said. “My usual sets had always consisted of just mixing older and newer songs. [The performance at Re:Birth] felt very new and fresh to me. I thought of my set more as performance art, which I had never really thought about or tried doing before.”

Adams hopes the festival’s open and experimental spirit will be as inspirational for attendees as it is for the artists themselves. 

“I think the people in town that don’t realize that they have all of these amazing things going on [will] come to the show and it will inspire them to maybe pick up a paint brush, if they haven’t in ten years, or to come out and visit shows that are going on to support their community,” Adams said.