Friday, May 5, 2017 (3:45 pm)

Imaginology judge is a community arts leader

Trinh Mai is not just a judge for Imaginology, she’s also an arts advocate, educator and community leader.

Through Cal State Fullerton’s Grand Central Art Center (GCAC) program, which helps bring art to low-income communities, Mai works with Heninger Village Senior Apartments in Santa Ana to help facilitate workshops that focus on sharing residents’ stories through visual arts.

The goal of the workshops is to help residents to not just create art, but to help heal them as well. 

“My aim has been to help them get involved outside of their environment, since the elders are often isolated,” Mai said.

Since starting in February 2016, Mai has been able to get her students’ work displayed at the Bowers Museum, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, Grand Central Art Center and, most recently, Coastline Gallery in Newport Beach. 

Through Community Engagement, a nonprofit that is funding Mai’s residency, GCAC also provides artists-in-residents with housing, studio space and support.

Mai was also a featured artist in The Artist Odyssey’s award winning documentary Honoring Life: The Work of Trinh Mai. The film went on to be the Audience Choice Award winner for Best Short Film at the 2016 Viet Film Festival in Orange.

With the help of Mai’s influence, some of the “Villagers” have started taking life drawing lessons at Q Salon in Santa Ana. Even some of their family members have taken inspiration from Mai.

Parker Cupa, 8, is the son of one of the villagers, and he had a painting on display at Imaginology.

“It’s amazing how they’ve been growing and are now so excited about getting involved in the art scene,” Mai said.

Imaginology is an annual educational and entertainment event focusing on activities related to STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and math held at OC Fair & Event Center.

Visit ocfair.com/steam for more information.

Monday, May 1, 2017 (3:44 pm)

New Program Gives Underserved Kids a Trip To The Fair

We’re launching a great new community giveback program at this year’s fair: OC Fair Kids Club. In its first year, the goal is to provide a free fair experience and bus transportation for 1,000 underserved children. The young fairgoers from local Title 1 afterschool and summer programs will also receive carnival coupons and a gift card for food and beverages.

“We are so excited to offer this program to help young people who would normally not be able to afford a trip to the fair,” said OC Fair & Event Center CEO Kathy Kramer. “Wewant to help these children enjoy the best event of the summer and can’t wait to provide them with a memorable fair experience.”

OC Fair Kids Club joins service programs that include We Care Wednesdays, serving local nonprofits, and Friends of the Fair, a special annual event for disabled fairgoers. These initiatives were winners of the Western Fair Association’s Merrill Award for industry excellence in 2016.

For more information about these community programs, or to submit an application for your Title 1 program (minimum 50 participants, maximum of 70 including chaperones) to be a part of OC Kids Club, contact ocfinfo@ocfair.com.

Wednesday, May 10, 2017 (3:29 pm)

Kathy Kramer: Looking toward the Fair

Our 2016 OC Fair television commercial not only caught the eye of our Fairgoers, won the prestigious ADDY award given by the American Advertising Federation. It’s a great honor to be recognized in the first level of a three-tiered national contest with over 40,000 entries, so congratulations team on that accolade.

Our bill SB741 just passed the requirement to being print for 30 days prior to being heard for the policy committee. Gonsalves & Sons continue to work with key stakeholders for support of this bill.

Staff is in full production mode focusing on delivering Imaginology, which happens in less than 30 days, and the OC Fair, which opens in exactly 113 days.

I’d like to share some highlights of how our summer concert series is  shaping up for this OC Fair. We have 14 shows already on sale, including two pre-fair performances, Gabriel Iglesias, aka, Fluffy, and Steve Miller Band performing with Peter Frampton are racing towards a sellout. Kenny Loggins and the B-52s featured in the Pacific Symphony are selling very well. We have a 12 percent increase in the number of concert tickets sold year-to-date over 2016, and a 30 percent increase in gross revenue year-to-date over 2016.

One of our goals for this year’s OC Fair was to expand the Hispanic programming. I’m excited to share a couple of new initiatives to 10 support this goal. We added another performance, Mariachis Sol de Mexico on August 6. There now will be two performances in The Hangar, one at 1:30 p.m. and the other at 6:30 p.m. Sol, for short, has been performing here for the past seven years, and they generally sell out. So we felt this was a perfect opportunity to expand this entertainment.

Another new initiative this year is the 19 partnership with the organizers of the Mariachi Youth Nationals and Summer Institute. This event brings around 150 to 175 mariachi students from around the world, and I do mean “around the world,” if you go to their website, quite impressed with the countries that are interested, they come together with some of the best professional mariachis in the country.

This year the winners from the competition have been invited to perform on stage August 6th with Sol. The organizers of the Youth Mariachi Nationals and Summer Institute are thrilled to have their students be part of the OC Fair. We are going to continue to work with them to develop 8 additional programming next year to include having 9 their competition here on that Saturday before. 10 So we are very excited about that partnership and 11 connecting with them.