_{Outside the Powerhouse, a reminder that summer is coming}

Preparations for the 20th Annual Fremont Summer Solstice Parade are underway, despite the gray skies and unseasonably chilly temperatures. Dedicated Fremonsters and members of the Fremont Arts Council (FAC) are in crunch season for the parade, which starts at noon on June 21st in the middle of the “center of the universe.”

Outside the FAC’s Powerhouse on Fremont Ave., batiked banners flutter in the breeze behind a line of float skeletons fenced off from the traffic that whizzes by. On Saturday morning, FAC president Jessica Randall was sawing through the 2x4s on top of a parade trailer as she explained one of the float ideas for this year’s parade- a retrospective of parade artwork from the last 20 years.

“We’re working on a float that will show the evolution of the Arts Council, in a way,” Randall explained. “We’ve had so many different creative individuals who have come and gone over the years- it’s a fun way to honor them.”

Inside the Powerhouse, which was once the steam plant to BF Day elementary school, the walls are lined with papier mache puppet heads, banners, paintings, streamers, and enough art supplies to transform all of Fremont (at least for a day).

_{Interior of Fremont Arts Council’s Powerhouse}

Local artist Carl Smool is giving a few different workshops this year to help create The Gateway, an interactive exhibit that will grace Gas Works Park for the second half of the celebration. After the parade marches through Fremont, the celebration continues at the park around noon with live music, a beer garden, food, and a twilight performance honoring the last 20 years of the Summer Solstice Parade.

As his students dip wadded and rubber-banded nylon banners into acid dyes, Smool encourages them to be creative and not be overly concerned with achieving perfection. Resist dying is a very forgiving art form, he explained.

“Happenstance is delightful,” Smool said. “I’m all about experimenting- you need to experiment to learn, but I’m happy with accidents as well.”

“This is a great art and science project,” said Barbara Luecke, as she pulled her banner out of one dye bath and prepared another. “You get a chemical reaction with visible results.”

_{Carl Smool demonstrates resist dying to workshop participants}

Luecke is one of the parade’s founders- she and Peter Toms brought the tradition with them from Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara’s version now draws over 100,000 people, and when Luecke and Toms moved up here, they found she missed all the revelry. When Luecke and Toms came across the Fremont Arts Council, Seattle’s version was born.

A couple of onlookers stop in to check things out, and one volunteer grabs a couple of photo albums. One of the photo albums, a battered, fragile book, is from the very first parade. While Luecke stands dying banners, the two older gentlemen open the album to the first page, showing Luecke and several others in costume smiling for the camera.

Much has changed since that first parade, and some of it is noticeable only because of the weather. In the old days, Randall said, Fremont’s business owners and community members used to offer up space inside their buildings for folks to work on their floats when the weather got too cold or rainy. Randall called around this year, but wasn’t able to find space, which is why so many of the floats are lining Fremont Ave. these days.

“It’s just part of it being a changing town,” Randall said. “A lot of the older folks are moving on, and we’re getting people in who own buildings that don’t live in Fremont. It used to be a little enclave, but when the community shifts like that it’s hard for neighborhood organizations, the school, and so forth,” she said, gesturing at BF Day’s looming presence behind the Powerhouse. “Of course, with gas prices going the way they are, that may change- everyone may wind up living and working around here again,” she said, smiling.

Still, many businesses in Fremont are supporting the parade- the Fremont Abbey Arts Center, the Fremont Neighborhood Council, Theo’s Chocolate, Stoneway Hardware, and Friends of Gasworks Park are among the sponsors. And the Arts Council will likely find many local volunteers in the next two weeks for Solstice Parade help ranging from staffing information tables to passing out chalk to children along the parade route.

If you’re interested in getting involved with the 20th Annual Fremont Solstice Parade, you can take a class, drop in one of the workshops, build a float, or volunteer. Oleana Perry is the Parade Volunteer Coordinator and can be reached at volunteer@fremontartscouncil.org. Lorrie Snyder is the workshop coordinator and can be reached at workshops@fremontartscouncil.org. More information about upcoming workshops and other opportunities are online at www.fremontartscouncil.org.