This weekend the annual Art Hop will turn Burlington’s South End into a kaleidoscope of creative energy, and the anticipation in some quarters is almost palpable. Organized by the South End Arts and Business Association (SEABA), the two days of open studios and special exhibits are hands-down the city’s most engaging, and ambitious, visual-arts event of the year. So much so that Vermont artists from well beyond the Queen City want to, and do, get in on the fun.

The free arts fest has a long track record — it’s now in its 16th year — that gives it the burnished reputation of a not-to-be-missed affair. The multimedia extravaganza fills nearly every nook and cranny between Main Street on the north and Flynn Avenue on the south, generally hewing to the Pine Street corridor. Actually, scratch that: This year, for the first time, Burton Snowboards enters the fray — as Amy Lilly explains below — extending the definition of “South End” by another mile or so.

The northern border has expanded, too — across Main Street. “Now both sides of the street can be the ‘south end,’” notes SEABA Executive Director Carlos Haase. That dispensation allowed Creative Office Solutions to host an exhibit, as well as the dubiously named band Boss Said Work. With more than 100 venues participating, “We’re really emphasizing the hopping around,” Haase says. “Taking away the big party [the city put the kibosh on the beer-fueled bash on Pine Street a couple of years back] allows other people to have their own events.”

(Attention, Hoppers: A shuttle bus will run a continuous loop around the whole shebang on Friday and Saturday. Let experience — of heinous traffic — be your guide, and do not take your car. Hop coordinator Bob Bolyard hints: “Burton has a big parking lot.”)

While the Hop is still primarily a visual-arts experience, this year’s event goes further than ever before in embracing other art forms. Music is always on tap, of course. This year, SoundToys, a Burlington audio plug-ins software company, and the Champlain College Emergent Media Center will host a “sound lab” paired with student-crafted interactive games — see Mike Ives’ explanation below. Other mediums on tap at the Hop: short films by Vermont filmmakers; poetry readings; a Green Candle Theatre Company preview of Michael Evans’ latest play, Art the Father; and culinary creations at Champlain Chocolates.

Then there are events that can’t rightly be called art at all (unless you count the martial variety): aikido and yoga demonstrations, a presentation on the Burlington Earth Clock, and Laura’s March, a fundraising walk for the Laura K. Winterbottom Memorial Fund.

Can the outsized puzzle pieces decorated by statewide political office-holders — part of the Vermont Art Council’s “Art Fits Vermont” project — be called Art? It’s a subjective matter, but Shay Totten weighs in on the, er, candidates. After the public servants’ creations are shown at the Champlain Elementary School on Saturday, “We’re hoping to move them to the SEABA hallway for the month of September,” says Bolyard.

Art Hop is a time not just for lookin’ but for learnin’. Besides the demos noted above, viewers can take in everything from iron pouring to papermaking — not at the same time. And at the third annual, bigger-than-ever “Strut” fashion show — a demonstration of creativity if there ever was one — you might learn how to turn the strangest things into wearables.

The centerpiece of the Art Hop remains the juried show. Its impressive 180 entries — most of them two-dimensional — appear this year in the hallways of the Soda Plant on Pine Street, with the jurors’ 27 picks clustered together in one section. The jurors are a husband-and-wife pair of artist/curators, Adriane Herman and Brian Reeves, from South Portland, Maine. “It’s the first time we’ve ever had more than one juror,” notes SEABA board Vice-President Mark Waskow, who also takes on the task of hanging all the art. “Their work challenges notions of high arts and low-brow culture,” he says of Herman and Reeves, “and causes viewers to question their relative value system.”

The pair’s relative valuations of Vermont-made art will be revealed this Friday. (Seven Days will assess the juried show in a future issue.) When Herman and Reeves were in Burlington last month, they spoke to Seven Days after nearly five hours of reviewing the entries — plus another two spent judging the outdoor sculptures. Their observations: “There’s work across the spectrum — very diverse in terms of material and stylistic idiosyncrasies and scale,” said Herman. She was impressed, too, that the outdoor art had an “outdoor feel,” explaining that she appreciates artwork sited for specific locations. “I would consider suggesting more artists to apply in that category,” she advised.

In sum, Herman said she was delighted with what she and Reeves saw in Burlington — especially its variety. Though teachers generally depict the history of art in broad strokes — the movements of the ages — “there were always really all these other things going on,” she said. “Artists are always concerned with a panoply of issues, and it’s great to see that all these things are alive and well.”

Though the couple can’t return for the Hop — she has an opening of her own to attend — Herman offered this parting observation: “We just want to say that it’s pretty extraordinary that Burlington is doing this event — it’s really something to not take for granted.”

Indeed. Happy hopping.

PAMELA POLSTON

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Cross-Sensory Purpose

Anyone who’s been to Higher Ground — its original Winooski location or current quarters in South Burlington — has admired the hip, artful concert posters ringing the room. They were made by designers in the Iskra Print Collective, a nonprofit offshoot of Jager Di Paola Design, which for the past decade has operated a screen-printing studio in the basement of its Maple Street building. Paint-splattered but tidy, the equipment-filled room is just around the corner from the company’s indoor skate ramp and the capacious gallery space called Sanctuary Artsite.

This week for Art Hop, the whole place will be open to the public for an exhibit of original concert posters and a big party celebrating the release of __ of 1500, a book that is also filled with images of some 130 posters and the story of a 10-year relationship with Burlington’s premier nightclub.

The posters were not made just to adorn the walls of Higher Ground, of course; in the tradition set down at legendary clubs like the Fillmore, they were given to patrons. For free. And while the typical purpose of a music poster is advance promotion, points out co-owner Alex Crothers, the high-quality, limited-edition Iskra posters have been handed out to concertgoers after the show — visual mementos of a shared musical experience.

He and partner Kevin Statesir decided to give out posters from the start. And who better to make them but the coolest design firm in town? They wrote a letter to Michael Jager proposing “the marriage of music and cutting-edge design,” says Crothers. In short, Jager loved the idea.

So did a succession of 40-some designers, who were delighted to devote their considerable aesthetic abilities to capturing the essence of beloved bands — without a client looking over their shoulders. They have had “complete creative freedom,” notes Crothers. “Over 10 years, only one idea was shot down.”

The members of Iskra — the word means “spark” or “inspiration,” explains JDK’s screen-printing expert Leo Listi — also found that their work became a showcase for the medium itself; they now exhibit their work at music festivals such as SXSW and at the poster convention Flatstock. Listi says that the limited color palette has often been the mother of invention at Iskra. Because of the time and numbers involved — a minimum of 200 posters per project — just two or three colors were used on the Higher Ground posters.

Indeed, that limitation posed no obstacle to inspiration, as these wildly disparate designs reveal. And the majority of the posters are square — a vestige of late, great album art, Crothers suggests. Going forward, the dimensions may change; the digital-download generation, after all, has no semaphoric nostalgia for the long-playing record. What the designers, and the music fans, do have is a consciousness that music and art are somehow inextricably linked. Iskra’s posters underscore that “simultaneous sensory experience,” as Jager puts it. “There’s something about sound and visuals — together they create memories.”

Sanctuary Artsite, 47 Maple Street, will exhibit Higher Ground concert posters and photographs by Rick Levinson, as well as celebrate the launch of __ of 1500, with an open house and party on Friday, September 5, 5-11 p.m. Featuring screen-printing demonstrations by the Iskra Print Collective and live music by The Cush. The exhibit will continue through the month of September.

PAMELA POLSTON

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Missing Pieces?

When art and politics mix, it’s artists who tend to impart their political visions to the world, supporting candidates and causes.

Why not give politicians a chance to impart their aesthetic visions for a change? With national presidential election campaigns under way and hundreds of Vermont races big and small coming up this November, Art Hop organizers wanted to give voters a new way to size up state pols: on their artistic merits.

It’s all part of the Vermont Arts Council’s yearlong “Art Fits Vermont” effort, a community-based project that offers folks across the state a chance to express themselves. (Last year, it involved painted palettes.) Since May, the council has handed out 9100 wooden puzzle pieces and 29,000 paper ones to community groups, schools and individuals. It will organize a final fête for “Art Fits Vermont” next year as part of the Lake Champlain Quadricentennial Celebration.

When the VAC asked to participate in Art Hop with a special puzzle display, event coordinator Bob Bolyard knew just what to do. “I’m a political person, and I thought it would be great to put together a display of political artwork by politicians,” he explained.

The office-holders were given no restrictions on how they could adorn their puzzle pieces. It will be interesting to see if any use this as an opportunity for electioneering — their submissions were just beginning to trickle in as Monday’s deadline closed.

The first official to turn in his creation — ahead of deadline! — was Attorney General Bill Sorrell (D). His inspiration for the green-and-blue-painted puzzle piece with giant red letters spelling “Justice”? “Mount Mansfield and Camel’s Hump and my hope for justice and peace in Vermont,” he told Bolyard. Materials for the piece set him back about $3, Sorrell said. “And, yes, I did it all myself, from the idea to execution.”

Bolyard hasn’t yet decided what to do with the pieces after the Art Hop — an auction is a possibility. If that happens, you can bet your bottom lap-dance dollar that the League of Drag Queen Voters (of which Bolyard is a founding member) will be there to complete the puzzle.

“Puzzling Pieces of Political Art” will be on display in the Champlain Elementary School, 800 Pine Street, on Saturday, September 6, 9 a.m. - 3 p.m. Pictured: Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie’s puzzle piece, created by Jennifer Whittingham.

SHAY TOTTEN

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Street Sense

Painter Gillian Klein grew up in Manhattan, exposed to the heady mix of high culture, fine food, fashion and what she summarizes as “the happening scene.” She makes no bones about being a “city girl.” And yet, Klein seems content to make her way in Vermont — albeit the state’s modest metropolis, Burlington. For the past seven years, while working at several area restaurants, she’s spent as much time as possible in her high-ceilinged studio in the depths of the labyrinthine Howard Space, producing oil paintings of . . . Manhattan.

“I’ve painted New York City since I was a kid,” Klein says. “My parents used to bring me subway maps for fun.”

Even so, it was during a difficult semester in Florence several years ago that she found her way — artistically speaking — back home. Klein’s self-designed study-abroad course, through Burlington College, sounds like an artist’s dream come true, but she acknowledges it was hard. For starters, she didn’t speak Italian. “Everything is different, even the quality of the air,” she recalls. “The simplest things were so foreign.”

The saving grace was meeting a well-known Italian painter, with whom she had “a platonic love affair about art.” She credits him for subtly influencing her relationship to the canvas, to paint, and to her subject matter. That’s when she “started thinking about the nature of home, what it means,” Klein says, noting her previous work had been mostly self-portraits. “So I started out painting, from memory, these images of New York City.”

While most viewers will recognize such Big Apple icons as the arch at Washington Square, the Flatiron Building or the Brooklyn Bridge, the cityscapes are otherwise indistinct. Literally. Klein’s views are somewhat blurry, rather the way a myopic would see the city sans eyeglasses. Light appears as haloed polka dots — not always in logical places — around her canvasses. Human figures are both uncommon and shadowy, mere suggestions of inhabitants. And yet Klein’s approach is not exactly Impressionist, à la Monet; the work is far more modern. In some cases her scenes seem covered in fog; the paint itself conveys wetness. This is in part “because of the air quality, the physical residue,” Klein explains, returning to the influence of her time in Florence. “It’s dank there a lot of the year.”

So, why impose the thick air of Florence on the environs of New York? Somehow this shrouded aspect simply became redolent of a place in the most cerebral sense — in the way one holds a memory, perhaps. Whatever this may mean to Klein personally, the approach she’s worked out invites myriad interpretations from viewers, as the best art often does.

Just don’t expect Klein to switch to Vermont views anytime soon: “Around here,” she points out, “another pastoral landscape artist isn’t really necessary.”

Gillian Klein Studio, in the Howard Space on Pine Street, will be open Friday, September 5, 5-10:30 p.m., and Saturday, September 6, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.

PAMELA POLSTON

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Out And About

One of the Art Hop’s liveliest components each year is the outdoor sculpture, and 2008 maintains that tradition admirably. From pigment-on-Plexiglas discs by Janet Van Fleet, affixed to an exterior wall of Pine Street Deli on Flynn Avenue, to the “Steam Punk Illuminator” by Steve Conant, found in front of Conant Metal and Light on Pine Street, three-dimensional artworks can be spotted up and down the South End corridor.

James Irving’s piece in front of The SkiRack on Main Street is entitled “Holy.” Its three hollow steel columns — the largest is about 7 feet tall, while the shortest is about knee-high — are painted bright blue. Each is perforated with holes of various sizes, as if they were pillars of Swiss cheese. The name is intended to be puzzling as well as a play on words.

“The title simply describes the piece while leaving a lot of questions and assumptions still in the air,” Irving notes. “This is the type of art that I thrive on, art that leaves us wondering about so many things.”

Irving contributed more than one piece to the Art Hop this year. His other is a playful, humorous sculpture entitled “Wishbone” that is sited in front of Champlain Chocolates on Pine Street. A steel ball, 4 feet in diameter and painted yellow, is wedged between two gracefully curved, orange-painted beams spread apart like a wishbone.

The sphere provides a focal point, but the sculpture gets interactive at its other end. Like a bouncy playground riding toy, an old steel tractor seat on a large, coiled spring invites viewers to sit down. Those who do are in for a jaunty surprise. “I think the coolest thing about ‘Wishbone’ is that no one knows what it is, and [they] certainly don’t know what to expect when taking a seat,” Irving said. “I like the opportunity this piece presents for great action photos.”

It sure does, and visitors stopping by this Saturday for “chocoArt” demonstrations indoors will want to give the “Wishbone” a bounce.

Outdoor sculpture appears in scattered locations around the South End, from The Ski Rack on Main Street down Pine Street to several sites on Flynn Avenue. A complete map is available in the Art Hop program. All of these works will remain in place for at least a month.

MARC AWODEY

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Getting On Board

It’s somewhat surprising that Burton Snowboards waited until this year to join the Art Hop, given its penchant for artist-designed merch. The company’s Andy Warhol designs filled the Firehouse Gallery last year, and this year it turned to Burlington-based painter Mikey Welsh for its new “Farm” line. But it turns out that Burton also employs a host of after-hours artists. Their non-corporate creations will be on view in a group show at the Industrial Parkway HQ this weekend.

Lorraine Reynolds, 39, is the force behind this inaugural exhibit. A technical design supervisor by day, she makes “assemblage art” from dismantled typewriters, old dolls and other found objects. Four months ago, she sent out a company-wide email asking other creative types to reveal themselves. More than a dozen artists ’fessed up.

Reynolds is curating the show, which opens Friday night. The three rooms of artwork will feature almost every medium, including photography, oil-on-paper and acrylic painting, printmaking, skateboard decks, jewelry and Reynolds’ own mixed-media collages.

The artists “came from the most surprising places” within the company, Reynolds says. Norm Thibault, a research and development machinist, contributed wood carvings. The company’s French-speaking dealer service rep, Joshua Farrington, will show his granite sculptures. “I expected people to come from graphic design,” says Reynolds, “but these are people who plug numbers all day. There really is that artist community at Burton.”

The employee show is not all the company is hosting; it’s also invited the public to participate in a family-friendly art project this Saturday. As cool as Burton boards are, they’re not biodegradable. Until recently, damaged snowboards that came back under warranty “just got cut up and dumped in the landfill,” says Burton project engineer Rachel Gitajn, 24. Two years ago, she and about 10 other employees formed an environmental committee — called EPIC, for “environmental protection, integrity and conservation” — that began donating the cracked boards to groups such as ReCycle North’s Waste Not Products and Vermont Ski Recyclers in Morrisville for creative reuse.

When EPIC learned that Burton would be involved in the Art Hop, Gitajn — a painter and self-described “undercover artist,” though not part of the group show — led the effort to organize an artsy waste-reduction event that would involve the community. The result is Hands-On Recycled Art, a two-hour craft opportunity for kids of all ages to turn half-boards (they’ll be pre-cut) into new creations. Participants can collage their boards using catalogues, glitter and out-of-date Burton marketing materials such as photos, fabric samples and zippers. Says Gitajn, “We’re asking every department, ‘Hey, what are the things that you usually throw away?’”

According to Gitajn, “Most people who snowboard dream of custom-designing their board”: The Hands-On event will give them some practice. But don’t expect to apply the same techniques to winter gear, she says: “The kind of glue we have won’t last in snow.”

The Burton Employee Group Show has its opening reception on Friday, September 5, 5-9 p.m. The Hands-On Recycled Art workshop happens on Saturday, September 6, noon - 2 p.m. Both at 80 Industrial Parkway. Info, 652-3782.

AMY LILLY

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Cube Your Enthusiasm

One day last winter at a trade show in Southern California, Ken Bogdanowicz discovered “music cubes”: hand-sized boxes manufactured by a Belgian company that make noise in response to motion. Very cool, he thought.

Bogdanowicz, 45, is the founder and CEO of SoundToys, a Burlington company that manufactures and sells “audio-effects plug-ins.” The software creates effects for the music, video-game and motion-picture industries and has been used by such artists as Nine Inch Nails, Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel, as well as producers of feature films Iron Man and The Polar Express. Naturally, Bogdanowicz wondered what noises the Belgian cubes would produce after a proper plug-in.

The result, he reports, “is just kind of a fun, experimental sound thing.” A guitar player with a background in hardware design, Bogdanowicz sometimes gets tired of being virtually stimulated. “So the cubes,” he explains, “seem like a really cool way to get back to the tactile, hands-on thing that you lose when you’re in front of a computer.”

This Friday, Vermonters can see, touch and hear the cubes for themselves. That’s when an empty space below SoundToys’ Church Street office — the former home of Church + Maple Glass — opens for “SoundToys SoundSpace.” The tactile bonanza will be accompanied by painting, sculpture and computer creations by students from Champlain College’s Communication & Creative Media Division. Later that night, after a performance by Champlain prof and playwright Eric Ronis, teens (enlisted by the Fletcher Free Library) will evaluate student-produced video games.

Bogdanowicz recalls that he offered Champlain the space after folks from the South End Arts and Business Association (SEABA) suggested the two entities would make a good match. Champlain, after all, is garnering plenty of attention these days for its Electronic Game & Interactive Development Program and its Emergent Media Center, which recently sent students to South Africa to gather material for a forthcoming educational video game.

Champlain has a ton of “creative energy,” asserts Toni-Lee Sangastiano, an assistant professor of multimedia and graphic design at the college, adding that its students crank out lots of artwork. However, the painter-cum-graphic designer lamented on a recent Friday morning at SoundToys, “We don’t have a place to show it!” This exhibit marks Champlain’s first official Art Hop foray, according to the 33-year-old prof.

As she spoke, Sangastiano was painting the still-empty space with blue paint that matched her eyes. Bogdanowicz, meanwhile, contemplated his “cube” room, wearing jeans and a T-shirt decorated with prints of neon-colored guitar-effects pedals. “We’re going to try to make it dark in here,” he mused. And the cube vibes, added the New Jersey transplant, will be multiplied by microphones and sound-activated “plasma panels” that remind him of “Star Trek.”

“Sound is an important part of the artistic experience,” Bogdanowicz said. “This a good exercise for us to stretch our creative abilities.”

“SoundToys SoundSpace” and mixed-media art by Champlain College students. SoundToys, 225 Church Street, Burlington. Friday, September 5, 5-8 p.m., and Saturday, September 6, 11-5 p.m. Info, 865-5437.

MIKE IVES

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Artist-Provocateurs

“Walls,” says Peter Schumann, “are not what they pretend to be. Only when walls admit to being prisons can they be fought.”

Schumann, the 74-year-old founder and creative force behind Bread and Puppet Theater, has built an artistic career out of throwing himself against walls — those that imprison, those that repress and those that protect the wealthy and powerful elite from the masses they purportedly serve.

“Wall,” a papier-mâché relief sculpture about the horrors that walls can generate, is composed of several 6-by-9-foot sections featuring various human faces and bodies. Created from brown paper and black and gray paint, some of the figures hold their arms in the air, while others are disembodied limbs that protrude from the surface, as though the bricks and mortar were themselves a compound of human flesh and blood. Black cardboard guns guard an ominous checkpoint.

The piece is accompanied by Schumann’s “17 Questions About the War in Iraq,” which features antiwar banners challenging conventional wisdom on the U.S.-led conflict. Both come on the heels of last year’s controversial Art Hop exhibit “Independence Paintings.” Inspired by a 2006 visit to the West Bank on Palestine Independence Day, Schumann combined images of Palestinians in various states of anguish with quotations from John Hersey’s book The Wall, about the Nazi extermination of the Warsaw Ghetto Jews.

At last year’s opening, author Joel Kovel presented a scheduled political talk that was highly critical of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. The event quickly devolved into a heated exchange of accusations and name-calling, and was followed by weeks of bruised feelings and community debate. Some critics dubbed the event “anti-Semitic,” “anti-Israel” and “Holocaust denial,” charges that Schumann and his supporters vehemently denied.

The SEABA board of directors was later praised for making a public statement in support of artists’ right to expression, even as several of last year’s advertisers withdrew their support for this year’s event. But the incident also led to a new set of policies and procedures for 2008 exhibitors. Presenters were required to submit detailed descriptions of their programs for prior review, in large part to ensure that they were sited in appropriate settings.

This year, Schumann’s work aims for broader and more universal human themes. Though he acknowledges, in a written statement, that the barriers he’s attacking include those that “wall the Palestinians out of their own economy,” this work does not specifically address the security wall or the Israel-Palestine conflict.

“My interest in inviting Peter back was because of the controversy last year,” says Flynndog curator Bren Alvarez. “To me, it really felt like Burlington was saying, ‘Peter Schumann is an anti-Semite and he’s not welcome here.’ I didn’t want Burlington to feel that way.”

And, while Schumann may not churn up the waters as he did last year, other works at the Flynndog may. On Saturday afternoon, Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel, which brought last year’s controversial speaker, are sponsoring Rajie Cook’s presentation of “box art” about the struggle for justice in Palestine. Cook will be followed by a mediated panel discussion on the role of art in addressing uncomfortable political issues. Alvarez says she extended invitations to several of the people who were critical of Schumann and Kovel; she says those invitations were declined.

“Fortunately, we’re a private gallery,” Alvarez adds. “Anyone can pick or choose what stone they want to throw. So, I guess we wanted to make sure we had multiple targets, so Peter is not the only one.”

Peter Schumann’s “Wall with Checkpoint” and “17 Questions About the War in Iraq” are part of “Open Minds, Open Eyes, Open Hearts” at the Flynndog, through October 30. The exhibit also includes Rajie Cook’s “Postering the Message” and Emily Anderson’s “When the Personal Is Political: Stages for My Father.” The reception on September 5, 5 p.m. - midnight, culminates in a “Cinco de September” dance party with music by DJ Mundo.

Additional programming on Saturday, September 6: “Assembling Toward Peace,” a

presentation by Rajie Cook followed by a mediated discussion, 2:30 p.m.; and “Art Beyond the Choir — Art Beyond the Frame,” an open discussion with Cook, Anderson, novelist Marc Estrin and others on how art and artists reveal injustice and raise social awareness, 3:30 p.m. Pictured: A detail from Schumann’s “Wall with Checkpoint.”

KEN PICARD

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Sock Hoppin'

While more “traditional” — and we use that term loosely, of course — displays of art take center stage during the South End Art Hop, it would be damn near tragic to overlook the musical offerings on the menu below Main Street this weekend. For one thing, the tunes here are strictly localvore. For another, you’ll need something to listen to while trying to convince your friends that you “really get the symbolism, man” behind those crazy paintings and sculptures.

On Friday night, Burlington’s reigning champions of acid-washed psychedelia, The Cush, set up shop in the city’s most hallowed hall of visual headiness, Sanctuary Artsite. That’s part of Jager Di Paola Kemp Design, which is responsible for the XBox 360, Burton Snowboards and myriad other impossibly hip products. Its nonprofit screenprinting outfit, Iskra, created those cool concert posters hanging on the walls at Higher Ground — in both Winooski and South Burlington. The nightclub and design firm are celebrating the release of a brand-new book documenting their 10-year relationship (see Pamela Polston’s detailed description on page 28A). And did we mention The Cush are playing?

Moving on, The Box Art Studio on Marble Avenue, home to visual and musical artists of all stripes, will be a-rockin’ and a-rollin’ Friday night with music from My First Days on Junk lead man Steve Hazen Williams. Burlington pop-rock favorites The Vanderpolls (formerly The Jazz Guys) are also slated to appear. And by the way, much of the visual art on display was created by members of Burlington’s multifaceted music community.

Across the street the same night, Speaking Volumes will host what has become Art Hop’s main music event for Burlington rock fans. “A Cabaret, Some Bands and Body Paint Fashion Show” is, well, exactly what it sounds like. The cabaret is courtesy of Radio Bean proprietor Lee Anderson’s Unbearable Light troupe, which performed at Bonnaroo earlier this summer. The bands are longtime Burlington rebel-folk hip-hop outfit Second Agenda, rockers Be 4 Now, guitar guru Bill Mullins’ resurrected rock trio Blowtorch, Anderson’s harmonicore outfit Cccome?, all-star newcomers Jesus Vanacho, and avant-rock experimentalists Electric Halo — who will play at the secondhand shop’s BBQ the next day, as well. Oh, and there’s body painting, too! Whew.

Of course, this list is but a sampling of the musical options available at the Hop this weekend. We could point you in the direction of other, equally interesting acts — like the mysterious Boss Said Work at Creative Office Solutions on Main Street Friday night. But, as with all of Art Hop, the best thing to do is just get out and go.

The Cush at Sanctuary Artsite, 47 Maple Street, Friday, September 5, 5-11 p.m. A Cabaret, Some Bands and Body Paint Fashion Show, featuring Lee Anderson’s Unbearable Light, Second Agenda, Be 4 Now, Blowtorch, Cccome?, Jesus Vanacho and Electric Halo, at Speaking Volumes, 377 Pine Street, Friday, September 5, 8 p.m. (Electric Halo also plays Saturday, September 6, at 1 p.m.) Boss Said Work at Creative Office Solutions, 86 Main Street, Friday, September 5, 8-10 p.m.

DAN BOLLES