Good vibes at the Germantown Arts District’s first festival

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By Constance Garcia-Barrio

With its buoyant ambiance and accent on creativity and healing, the Germantown Arts District Festival (GAD) held on April 20 seemed sprinkled with fairy dust.

“This street fair has a different energy,” said attendee Ron Riggle, between bites of a hot fragrant pork taco. “It’s more vibrant.”

The celebration, which stretched along Germantown Avenue from School House Lane to Armat Street, featured two stages, dozens of dancers, vendors of goods — unique and traditional, and food trucks whose aromas could seduce even determined dieters.

“We’re making sure everyone knows we’re here,” said Kristen Clark, the founder and executive director of GAD, as well as the owner of Kinesics Dance Dynamics (KDD) Theatre, a dance studio and live performance space.

Photo: Steven CW Taylor

Philadelphians are familiar with Germantown’s graceful stone buildings and historic significance, but its arts scene is less well known, Clark noted.

“We want to support artists along this corridor,” she said.

Festival organizer Idriz Muhammed said that besides acknowledging Germantown’s creatives, the festival celebrates GAD’s first anniversary.

The event included free activities that blended creativity and healing. At one booth, a ceramic artist led young people in making clay cups on a potter’s wheel. Working with clay can be grounding and reassuring, many potters say. Free 5-minute reiki sessions, in which practitioners place their hands on or near the body to balance its energy, were also available at that booth.

At another booth, Khadijah Renee Morgan, CEO of The Energy Healing Center of Philadelphia, also spoke about reiki while Cheniece Polk, her student and a reiki healer, sold turmeric soap for $6 per bar.

“It helps with inflammation and dark spots,” Polk said.

Besides the healing touch, good vibes could be had for the listening with love songs resonating from one of the stages.

To encourage even ephemeral art making, a big table had thick sticks of chalk in many colors to make sidewalk art. People had drawn hearts, flowers, odd faces, and more within the trolley tracks on Germantown Avenue.

Further down the street, Dennis “Yogi Den” Davis, an instructor at Space and Grace Yoga Studio, spoke of how yoga and meditation changed his life.

“As a younger person, I had a beautiful imagination, but I was rebellious,” Davis said. “I had to work on self-control.”

The moniker “Dennis the Menace” would have fit him at that time, he said.

“I was arrested once, but I wasn’t held because my father worked at the Youth Study Center.”

Davis’s life changed when he had an out-of-body experience while meditating some years ago, he said.

“I was able to release negative emotions. It led me to develop a spiritual practice.”

Now Davis teaches Kemetic yoga. Said to have developed in Ancient Egypt, it’s more slow and deliberate than Hatha yoga from India.

Kemetic yoga has poses in common with Hatha yoga as well as others that are unique. Drums thundered on the main stage as visual artist Logan Grant worked on a Black-themed drawing.

“I started out drawing comics,” said Grant, a graphic designer and freelance illustrator who attended Central High School.”

He values his scholastic achievements, but drawing seems to bring him closer to a holistic grasp of challenges Black Philadelphians face.

“I hope to understand my community, to address poverty, [and] addiction. These issues trouble me but inspire me,” he said.

Speaking of artful creations, fashion designer Valerie Mangum, known for whipping up fabulous prom dresses, set up shop outside of Gaffney Fabric Store on the corner of Germantown and School House Lane. With different kinds of cloth arrayed around her, she was working a piece of silver-toned fabric into a rose.

Nearby, Denise White, owner of Lulu Stunner Haute, displayed jumpsuits in burnished gold hues in her booth. “I like clothes with a Caribbean vibe,” said White, who has a degree in fashion marketing. “I target women [from ages] 42 to 56. They don’t want to look like Barbie, but they want to be stylish.”

Just steps away, Ubuntu Fine Arts at 5423 Germantown Avenue, offers breathtaking photographs that range from a policeman hitting an unarmed person to streetscapes and spectacular nature scenes.

While beauty and spirit add much to life, one sometimes needs a bite to eat. Choices at the festival included international dishes. A Mexican taqueria perfumed half the block with pork and chicken roasting in secret sauces, not to mention, beverages and quesadillas.

Flavors from other parts of the globe included goodies from Majdal Bakery.

“I come from Golan Heights, and I use traditional ingredients,” said Kenan Rabah, the baker. “I have a flat bread filled with leeks, onions, and garlic — all the spring alliums — and another with spinach, cheese, and olives, among other kinds,” said Rabah, a regular at the Germantown Farmer’s Market.

On the sweet side, Rabah’s menu includes babka, a rich dough with chocolate, hazel nuts, and bourbon cherries.

Peruvian-born Alexandra Giel, head chef and founder of la Llamita Vegana (the Little Vegan Llama) offered delicious plant-based Peruvian food with gluten-free and organic ingredients. One of her creations consisted of sweet potato, beans, kernels of corn, and slivers of onion in a tangy juice of lemon or lime and garlic.

London transplant Victoria Lindchan, an urban farmer here in Philadelphia, specializes in teas and herbs to strengthen new mothers. The herbs would benefit anyone, said Lindchan, a mother herself, but added that her blends are especially restorative for women who’ve recently given birth.

“For example, some of my teas have red raspberries, which tone the womb and also have anti-inflammatory properties.”

Filled with renewed energy from flavorsome foods, many children seemed ready to explore the festival’s Kid Zone, a space made to ignite their imagination. Natural Creativity Center Homeschool Resource, located in Germantown, designed the zone. The center, “a resource for self-directed partnership education,” serves kids from ages 4 to 18 and offers a summer camp.

On the collegiate track, the festival’s HBCU (historically Black college and university) Corner, provided a place where young people could hear first-hand from Philadelphia’s HBCU students about the preparation needed and the value gained from attending these schools.

The event’s attention to creativity, health, growth, and imagination seemed to pay off. People left smiling, appearing as if the festival’s magic had been worked on them.

If you missed the festival, fear not. Every fourth Friday GAD has a neighborhood-wide event that “offers something for everyone.” https://www.gadphilly.org/fourth-fridays

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