Treefort Music Festival: See work by Interfaith’s artists in residence & our Art on the Street documentary

Artfort: Sept. 23 + 25

Chris Alvarez and Geoffrey McCauley are both known at Interfaith Sanctuary for their creative abilities. They’ve been hard at work painting, drawing, making music, and more since joining day programs at Interfaith Sanctuary. This week, they’ll showcase their work as featured artists at the Treefort Music Festival in Boise.

Artfort, the section of the festival dedicated to the fine arts, performing arts, and public art installations, will feature McCauley and Alvarez alongside 26 other emerging artists based in our area. Both have their own space at the festival to discuss the bodies of work, show off their talent, and network with festival attendees.

McCauley is a Louisiana native who makes music, paints, and is the founder of the art collective hosted at Interfaith Sanctuary. He enjoys watching others create and feels that spreading the love of creativity helps erase the stigmas surrounding homelessness. McCauley has been creating his entire life. “If I wasn’t drawing on paper, I was drawing in the dirt,” he said.

Alvarez’s primary mediums are painting and drawing. He grew up in San Diego, where graffiti sparked his lifelong interest in fine art. “Graffiti was like looking at a maze with the colors and the lines all over the place, and there was just something strange about it. I thought the bubble and the block letters were fascinating,” Alvarez said.

Artfort’s opening night is on Thursday, Sept. 23 at 6:00 p.m. at LED, located at 1420 W Grove Street, Boise, ID 83702. On Saturday, Sept. 25, Alvarez and McCauley will participate in a live creative show outside of the Owyhee building, located at 1109 W Main Street, Boise, ID 83702, between 2:30 and 5:00 p.m.

Visit https://www.treefortmusicfest.com/fort/artfort/ for updates.

Filmfort: Sept. 24

In 2019, a guest at Interfaith Sanctuary founded an art collective so that people without a place to live could get together and create. Our shelter provided space for the collective to meet and materials to create with. The pandemic forced us to put the art collective on hold, and we’re gearing up to get it up and running again once we can do so safely.

Our shelter won a grant from the Boise City Department of Arts and History to create a short documentary to spread the word about the collective and encourage artists and makers in the community to get involved. The documentary, called Art on the Street, was completed in August and will screen for the first time during Filmfort, the section of the festival dedicated to cinema.

Art on the Street premieres at the LED gallery, located at 1420 W Grove St, Boise, ID, 83702 on Friday, Sept. 24 at 9:10 p.m.