By Spencer Schneier, Staff Writer

Published in print Sept. 24, 2014

ArtsGreensboro is putting on their annual 17 Days festival, which will showcase performance, visual, audio and many other types of art throughout Greensboro. Despite her busy schedule, Deputy Director Eleanor Schaffner-Mosh was kind enough to take the time to conduct a phone interview with The Carolinian.

SS: Talk a little bit about 17 Days.

ESM: 17 Days is a collaborative arts and culture festival, and it lasts for two and a half weeks, or 17 days.

This is the fourth year that Arts Greensboro has hosted it, and it is a great way to call attention to the new features of all the art organizations in town.

So by hosting, the Arts Greensboro promotes all the events and there are over 150 events this year, about half of which are free. We promote the events with about $300,000 worth of media coverage, publicity and advertising, and we are able to drive a lot of attendance to these events.

SS: In its fourth year, what are your goals for 17 Days?

ESM: Our goals are to become more inclusive and to incorporate even more and different kinds of events in the festival. This year we have participation from NC A&T, we have official participation from UNCG and a lot of their arts, music and theatre departments, which we haven’t had before as official members of the festival. We’re just trying to reach as many people as we can because the arts are such a rallying point for our community.

SS: What are you most looking forward to about 17 Days?

ESM: Personally, as a theatre girl…I’m very excited about the amazing theatre offerings we have. I am also incredibly thrilled about the public artist Tagtool [OMAi], if you’ve seen anything about it. They are the interactive projections happening all over town. They have a public art endowment, which is an initiative of the community foundation of greater Greensboro.

They are made up of three light artists from Vienna. Markus and Josef Dorninger and their partner and they do amazing animations and drawings which they project on buildings and other outside structures.

They’re doing sessions where the public is invited they had their first one last [Thursday] night projecting onto a building from a parking lot. There were hundreds of people out there playing with this amazing app that they use which is named Tagtool. It’s an amazing thing they are going to be doing projections. They also will be projecting onto the water tower at Bennett College and they have all sorts of things happening over the next two weeks.

Schaffner-Mosh also made some recommendations for UNCG students looking to take in some of the festival. One event she strongly recommended was the body painting competition on Sep. 28 from 2-8pm, which will include time to interact with the body painters followed by a competition judged by international-renowned judges. There will be an admission fee and ticket information can be found online.

The Weatherspoon Art Museum on UNCG campus will also be hosting events such as Shouts of Joy and Victory which will feature Judeo-Christian works.