This Friday and Saturday, October 15th, Atlanta’s West End Art District will be hosting the first Annual Visionary Arts Fair, a unique foray into a psychedelic dream world immersed in the fusion of art and music. Featuring visionary artists, Alex and Allyson Grey, the show is presented by Area 51 Productions and is a multi-sensory experience with an array of innovative and spiritual performances and exhibits.
Visionary art originally began as an aesthetic movement in which people used psychedelics and recorded the fractals they saw. Today, the movement also involves using meditation and centered-thinking as means of witnessing and painting fractals.
The show will be music-driven with live music on four separate stages. Psychedelic rock and jam music will dominate the daytime while DJ’s and electronica will rule the night.
Evening performances will also feature aerial acrobatics and circus performances, including groups like Cirque de Surreal and Imperial Opa. There will also be fire-spinners and other types of shows. These are more unorthodox performances than the usual garden-variety circus and feature innovative as well as dreamlike skits.
Daytime musicians include: Ralph Roddenberry, Donna Hopkins, Deep Blue Sun, Copious Jones and the Bill Flemming Expand Band. The nighttime shows will feature music by SugarKayne, Ploid, Medisin, Satchiohm, EP3 and Eulogy.
The festivities will include famed body painters Scott Fray and Foxy Moxy, winners of the World Body Painting Championship. Their show involves them painting full-body art live on five models. The nighttime will also feature laser lighting and liquid sky visual effects as well as an appearance by Dr. Megavolt, a performance artist who uses electricity generated from Tesla coils as part of his show.
Alex and Allyson Grey, the show centerpieces, enjoy painting side by side while the music is playing and the dancers are performing. They’ll also be giving two separate lectures on the spiritual implications of hallucinogens and it’s relation to the art they create.
“Part of what makes [Alex] unique is that he brings the corporal into the fantastical. He does this while searching for higher consciousness,” said David Morris, owner of Area 51 Productions.
Anyone hoping to experience a psychedelic festival that incorporates an omni-sensory aesthetic experience will find something to behold here. It’s a show that stimulates the visual experience and integrates it with dance and music to form something completely new and radical.