By EZEKIEL KINGSBURY
On Saturday, September 28, in an attempt to incite 30-year-old nostalgia, Geronimo Hospitality Group (my former employer) and Hendricks Commercial Properties hosted “Deviate Beloit,” a one-night-only, five-hour art festival that doubled as a “party.” Your intrepid reporter, along with two accomplices (Sam Shea’25 and Nick Lanpheer’25), later joined by this newspaper’s Back and Graphics Editor Sophia Nitsche’25, headed down to the Ironworks campus to get the scoop on this auspicious evening of festivities.
The week before, Shea expressed worry over the event. “Have you seen the website?” he would ask me in class, “it looks kinda scary.” Not one to be spooked myself, I convinced him and his fraternal brother Lanpheer that we really ought to at least check out this sight.
Beloit, according to my mom, used to be known for its vibrant art scene. Spending her high school years in Janesville, she reportedly would come down here on the weekends to party. Once, she attended a house party Green Day played at (where they reportedly ruined the vibe by breaking a light fixture). Now, I don’t know if you all have noticed this, but things seem kind of dead around here most of the time. There are a lot of fluorescent lights, millennial-tailored niche restaurants, overpriced coffees, and overall dead vibes. (An exception to this, I will say, is the Farmer’s Market, though, that too suffers from the corporatized atmosphere of the town.)
Deviate Beloit seems to be a rebellion against this climate. The website looks crazy: “kinda scary,” as previously mentioned. And, true to their promises, as we approached security, my crew spotted a large, pretty lit crowd (avg. age probably 34, 60:40 F:M). After being wished “Happy Birthday” by the security guard checking all were 21+, we went through those pearly gates and entered a strange rave-for-those-not-into-raves, post-punk, loud-af scene. In front of us was a 12-foot-Home-Depot skeleton, on the left was a stage, down the middle were art booths, and on the right were more art booths and a bar (where a Coors Light cost $6 — criminal in my opinion after the $15 entrance fee, AND they expected us to tip? No thank you.).
A large amount of the art booths boasted heart-made-out-of-barbed-wire, sad Bart Simpson, “trippy” mushroom rug-type pieces, selling from anywhere between $200 to $1500, though this is nothing in comparison to the overpriced pieces selling in Bagels and More.
There were exceptions to this rule, though. In particular, our crew enjoyed the works of Derek Hambly. This Aussie was cracked at painting trees, imbuing his canvases with physical texture and a kind of evil vibe. We also enjoyed Mushka Studios‘ work, which uses VR sculpting to create pretty freaky things. This booth also had amazing etch-a-sketch drawings.
(A quick aside — Shea, Lanpheer, and I sat down on a couch in front of a painting. We looked pretty cool, I thought, so I asked this lady standing to our left to take a picture of us. She straight-up ignored us. I was pretty offended, so we got up and walked away. Three minutes later, probably after seeing Shea’s beautiful body, she runs up behind us and demands that we let her take a pic of us. No!)
We were also entranced by a glass-blower who specialized in pipes, for, uh, weed. Shoutout Kauchak Kreations.
After getting our fill of some art, spending another six bucks on beer (this sucks), and using the pristine Porta-Potties, the squad headed over to the stage. Boom: fashion show time. We didn’t know anything about fashion, but we were entranced. Fast-forward half an hour of us standing in awe, and Astral Hand (their lead singer who looked just like Roman from “Succession”) took the stage post-fashion-show. They said, “This song is called ‘A Thousand Years of Sound.’” So we kind of tuned out after that, and instead watched the Aerial Show “Up With Dance.” Again, Sam Shea stood in awe.
After seeing his reaction to all these women, we knew our friend Sam needed to meet some. Just to our luck, there was a booth where you could sit down on a chair while four very tall women stood over you (and this was cool?).
Did this event bring culture back to Beloit? Eh. The DJ sitting in the Red Bull truck was pretty cool, though. The entire night, about 8 people were dancing to his music but he kept the same energy the ENTIRE TIME. It was pretty sick.
Most of the artists were amazing, but for all its effort to seem rebellious, it had a slick, corporate undercurrent that felt a little off. I just don’t know if my mom would go to this and think, “Yeah. Beloit.” I don’t think any light fixtures got smashed at Deviate.
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