Strawberry Fields Kite Festival

We still have Covid-19 with us, unfortunately, but we may be able to have some fun in 2021! Until we hear otherwise, we are planning for our big 30th Anniversary Festival. We are asking people who are interested in coming to the festival to get a ticket (still FREE), which will enable us to get data around who is interested. This will enable us to better plan several parts of the festival, including how many food trucks to invite.... Get your tickets from this site: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4769622 The Kites: There are various ways to get a kite. DIY: We are making available a pattern for our kites on our website, so that these kites can be made at home. They are simple kites, but if you got one last year or in previous years, you will know how easy they are to make and to fly. www.strawberryfieldskitefestival.com We will have kites available at the festival for a small donation. We are also thinking of making the kites available to buy online. Let us know if you like this option. There will be more information as the date gets closer. Cheers! Anne, Rick and Joan

A bright new home for the Kite Museum in Tokyo!

With sadness, we learn that renowned Hungarian kite artist István Bodóczky has passed away yesterday. He was likely the most innovative kite artist in the world... and in our times. R.I.P. He was a visual artist of beautiful abstractions. As professor of art and pedagogy at the Hungarian University of Craft and Design, he was also a committed teacher. Born into a family of lawyers, he instead chose to be an artist at the age of 14. I’m considered a rebel by my family, he said. Father of three sons, he took up kite flying in the l970s to amuse them. It was hard going for him at first because he couldn’t get his homemade kites to fly. The children were upset, so I kept at it, he recalled. He not only persevered, he became obsessive, he said. My pictures and kites came together when a Hungarian television crew challenged me to fly one of my oddly shaped paintings on exhibition in an art gallery. It was a work on paper framed by bamboo with a free-form, highly irregular outline. I was rather annoyed at the challenge. But I did take up the challenge and luckily that first painting cum kite flew. It flew so easily and so well that it made me believe I could fly anything. Then I found out it was not so easy after all. But I remained convinced that if I had luck and patience I could make any of my paintings fly and this has proved to be the case. Combining painting with kites kept me from developing a split personality, which I did not want to have. By making paintings that fly, I get the joy of doing both art and making kites. Soft-spoken, reflective, serene, Bodoczky confided that most of his asymmetric creations do not fly well immediately. I go to a faraway, hidden spot to test fly them. I’m not an expert at aerodynamics. I use trial and error. I add beeswax to change the weighting, change the bridling which I have only guessed at to begin with. And of course I use tails. Almost all my kites fly at the end. I never give up. But I am not fond of some of them if too much struggle has been involved.

Kites to make at home. Tested and good flyers!