As told by Graham Sayers of SuperCider Me and Chesterfields Homegrown Cafè
If you were to take the cast of characters that make up the creative economy in Prince Edward County and put them together in a movie, David Lynch himself would shake his bewildered head in disbelief. I hope I’m not jinxing my chances of David directing Supercider Me – The Movie, but Frank Booth would be the milkman around here, and Laura Palmer would be teaching Sunday school. In The County, The Elephant Man has an extended family. Our little piece of paradise attracts eccentrics and dreamers from all corners, and our community continues to reap the rewards of cultural enrichment. A person could go mad trying to sort out the storylines of all the local visionaries and cider-guzzling weirdoes: it’s probably better to let the combined picture tell the story.
Having said that, let me focus on a couple of those weirdoes. Krista Dalby and Milé Murtanovski came to The County less than a year ago, and turned an old farmhouse, barn and silo into Small Pond Arts, an arts centre, gallery and artists’ residency. This eclectic duo’s collective talents include stilt-walking, puppeteering, screenwriting, costuming and painting, to name a few. I met Milé at a County Cider and Pork Pairing dinner at Chesterfields Homegrown Café, where he invited our family to a shadow puppet show they had been working on with a couple of their resident artists. The night was filled with great puppets, delicious ciders, and lots of laughs. Small Pond Arts later hosted the International Festival of the Stick, an ingenious and hilarious event aimed at involving the whole community in a collective art project. Milè has most recently graced the wall of Chesterfields with a stunning mural of Carmen .
People are looking up to Milé and Krista – and not just because they walk on stilts. There is a shared appreciation for the sense of humour and whimsy they bring to their art, and the way they endeavour to let the whole County in on it. I look forward to many more ciders in the Silo.
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