FLORENCE — Donnabelle Casis had lived in Florence for close to 10 years when she began thinking about putting together some kind of event that would highlight the artistic energy she’d come to experience in her adopted hometown.
“I’d met so many talented artists and musicians here, writers, creative people, you name it,” said Casis, a painter and collage artist who moved to Florence in the early 2000s from the Pacific Northwest, where she earned an MFA in painting from the University of Washington in Seattle. “I wanted to find some way to celebrate that, using Florence as its center.”
Thus was born Florence Night Out (FNO) in 2013, a free, one-day festival that featured open art studios, live music and other events, held indoors in various venues in and around downtown Florence; it drew some 800 people to the village, organizers say.
After a few more years of similar festivals and then a two-year hiatus, Florence Night Out returned in 2019 in a much bigger format: a block party in which a closed-to-traffic Main Street was turned into a forum for music, pop-up art installations, dancing, food, craft-making and more. Now it’s set to come back on Saturday, Sept. 24, bigger than ever.
“I think of this as my love letter to Florence,” said Casis, who pulled together a 10-person team, plus some dedicated volunteers, a few years ago to broaden the scope of FNO.
Among those who have come aboard are Casandra Holden, the creative director of Laudable Productions in Easthampton, which runs the Bombyx Center for Arts & Integrity in Florence, and Amanda Herman, the education curator at the University Museum of Contemporary Art (UMCA) at UMass Amherst.
Florence businessman Robert Ross, a longtime member of the Florence Civic and Business Association, is another key figure, serving as FNO’s community coordinator.
“It made a lot of sense to pull in the local businesses and people like Robert Ross to help with logistics and make this a real community event,” Casis said. “Their support has been wonderful.”
FNO 2019 drew some 5,000 people, she noted, and after the event was canceled in 2020 because of the pandemic, FNO 2021 again drew significant crowds, even though people were asked to wear face masks and lingering concerns about COVID-19 kept some people away.
“I think a lot of people were just happy to have somewhere to come together, to be outside and have fun after all the isolation we’d gone through,” noted Casis.
FNO 2022 runs from 4 to 7 p.m. in downtown Florence, with additional events at the Bombyx Center from 4-5:45 p.m. (film screenings) and 7:30-10 p.m. (an “after party” with folk/pop singer-songwriter and Massachusetts native Hayley Reardon).
The block party segment, which includes the downtown area between Chestnut Street and the Florence Civic Center, is chock full of events, from dance to music to varied art activities. There are three music stages and a variety of bands scheduled to play, including the indie-folk duo High Tea, Holyoke rockers The Basement Cats, and the Gaslight Tinkers, who blend African, Caribbean, Funk, and reggae rhythms with traditional fiddle music.
Another key feature of FNO: Mobile Art Boxes (MABs), large storage containers that become the setting for unusual art installations. For instance, “Limulus Love,” by Jupong Lin, uses a multimedia format to celebrate the Atlantic Horseshoe crab, including video projections of crabs dancing and making drawings in the sand. Origami horseshoe crabs also hang in the space.
An exhibit by Sarah Stefana Smith, meantime, draws on the anti-slavery and abolitionist work of Sojourner Truth by revisiting the “carte-de-visite, small photographic portraits of their likeness, that Truth used to circulate her message and fund her work,” according to program notes.
“The Mobile Art Boxes are kind of our signature piece,” Casis said.
Also on tap: additional art displays, including a mural on the side of Pivot Media and paintings by Barbara Neulinger and Gabriel Phipps; multiple dance performances, including a salsa workshop; and art activities for children and families such as a puppet parade and a printmaking workshop.
FNO 2022 will mark something else: Casis says she’ll be stepping down from the event to focus on others aspects of her career, and simply to have more time for her art. Among the other artistic hats she wears is serving as the host of the “ArtBeat Report” on WHMP-FM.
FNO “is a big undertaking, a lot of work, and we’ve had seven iterations of it, so I think it’s time for me to move on,” said Casis. “I felt like my goal was to try and help establish Florence as its own arts community, and I think we’ve done a pretty good job of that … I’m kind of retiring my brand.”
In fact, some state arts officials and lawmakers toured downtown Florence last week to check out its arts and cultural scene, during which the Bombyx Center was awarded a $169,000 state grant to do additional work on its building.
It’s not clear what will happen with FNO next year, Casis noted. But she hopes — and feels pretty confident — that other organizers will pick up the mantle and continue to host some kind of artistic and community event in Florence.
“It could take a different form,” Casis said. “But as long as it has some kind of artistic component, I’d be happy to assist that in some way.”
To find out more about FNO 2022, including working as a volunteer at the festival, visit florencenightout.org.
Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.