It’s time to sharpen your knives and start carving those pumpkins as West Philly Local’s 2nd Annual Pumpkin Carving Contest has opened today. We are accepting photos of your pumpkins through October 29. Please follow this link to read more about the contest and how to enter it.

We have awesome prizes from these amazing sponsors this year: Curio Theatre, Dock Street Brewery, Four Worlds Bakery, Green Line Cafe, Lil’ Pop Shop, Locust Moon Comics, Mariposa Food Co-op, Penn Museum, and Sabrina’s Cafe.

Don’t miss this great opportunity to engage with the environment and the history of one of the nation’s oldest botanical gardens. Data Garden’s bio-interactive art and music festival, The Switched-On Garden, returns to Bartram’s Garden on Sunday. From 2 to 8:30 p.m. head to Bartram’s and connect with it through live music, performance and sculpture that blurs the distinction between biological and digital worlds. This is a free event and everyone is welcome. Here’s a full line-up:

Live Performances

 
KING BRITT (Album Release Concert)
Philadelphia producer, composer, performer and curator of electronic music will explore sound design, noise and ambient.

SPACESHIP ALOHA (EP Release Concert)
Philadelphia producer/composer/percussionist Christopher Sean Powell (Man Man/Need New Body) teams up with Data Garden to bring you the maiden voyage of Spaceship Aloha.

ALLEN CRAWFORD with LAURA BAIRD, DINO LIONETTI (of Cheap Dinosaurs) and GRETCHEN LOHSE
A sonic essay inspired by Bartram’s Garden

COSMIC MORNING
Renowned visualist and educator Don Miller presents a special light show that revisits the roots of modern VJ culture.

DJ RYAN TODD
International crate digger and electronic music producer Ryan Todd will provide natural grooves. Continue Reading

This upcoming Second Friday on Lancaster Avenue, Oct. 12, look out for Fall Market discounts, street vendors, live music, giveaways and plenty more. Little Baby’s Ice Cream Truck and Jimmie’s Cupcakes will also be there in this beautiful fall weather.

The collaboration between Diedra Krieger, a participating artist in the 40th Street Artist-in-Residence program, and community members made it possible to create something amazing at the corner of 49th and Chancellor Streets. Plastic Fantastic is a 16-foot geodesic dome covered in over 6000 recycled water bottles collected from residents and organizations.

The project’s goal is to raise public awareness to such problems as access to clean water, the politics of water, environmental issues, recycling, self-care, and equity. The dome structure, which is a metaphor of liberated consciousness, was first built in 2007 and since then the Plastic Fantastic project has traveled to many locations, most recently to Salisbury University (in 2011).

Plastic Fantastic is a great community effort. Besides the artist and individual water bottle collectors, the installment at 49th and Chancellor is a joint collaboration among Huey School’s after school program, Portside Art Center, University City District, 40th Street AIR, Mariposa’s Food Justice and Anti-Racism (FJAR) Working Group, The Rotunda, Hector’s Metal Shop, Inciting H, Planet Fitness, Bikram Yoga of Philadelphia, and Bartram’s Garden.

The project will be on display through October 17 and this Friday (Oct. 12) everyone is invited to a public reception, beginning at 6:30 p.m. at the corner of 49th and Chancellor. As part of this project, there will also be a free film screening at the Lucien E. Blackwell Library (125 S. 52nd St) on Tuesday, Oct. 16, at 5:45 p.m. The film, Tapped, sheds light on the bottled water industry’s impact on our health, economy, environment and more. Please RSVP to: education@mariposa.coop

To learn more about this project, visit Plastic Fantastic Facebook page.

Huey After School Program students helped out with the Plastic Fantastic project (they got 1000 bottles onto the dome).

The Runner Stumbles cast members Isa St.Clair (Sister Rita) and Steve Carpenter (Father Rivard). Photo by Kyle Cassidy.

West Philly’s Curio Theatre Company begins its eighth season this Thursday with The Runner Stumbles by Milan Stitt. First produced on Broadway in 1976, The Runner Stumbles is based on a true story that happened in 1911 at a Roman Catholic parish in rural Michigan. It is a long-awaited project for director and Curio co-founder Gay Carducci.

“It’s a play about a crisis of faith, with a hint of mystery,” she says. “It’s been speaking to me since I saw it done 20-some-odd years ago. And it’s always a piece that I loved and wanted to bring back again.”

The cast features Ryan Walter, Rachel Gluck, Harry Slack and Artistic Director Paul Kuhn, all of West Philadelphia, as well as Aetna Gallagher of Wallingford, Liam Castellan of Center City, and introducing Meridian Lowe, a student at Masterman High School and one of the first students in Curio’s educational program.

The show runs October 11 to November 10 on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., in the Calvary Center at 4740 Baltimore Ave. Tickets are $15-20 ($10-15 for preview performances). For more information and to buy tickets, visit this page.

Locust Moon Comics shop, which recently moved into a new, spacious location near 40th and Chestnut, is celebrating the release of its first book this week. Locust Moon Press has teamed up with Dark Horse Comics to release the 430 page science fiction fairy-tale anthology titled Once Upon A Time Machine. This is a long-awaited release – the book represents the culmination of three years of collaboration in Philadelphia and beyond.

The project began in the summer of 2009, when Locust Moon’s creative director Chris Stevens came up with the idea for a collection of futuristic stories based on classic myths and fairy tales. He began reaching out to local creators and established an online presence to make contact with artists and writers across the world. As an Internet buzz began to build about the book, an unexpected email came from Dark Horse Comics and the project which began with no money, artists, or scripts, became a major release from one of the biggest comic book companies in the world.

“Locust Moon is a place built on the passions of a lot of people,” says publisher and co-owner Josh O’Neill. “It’s living proof that with an open heart and open doors you can create something much bigger than the sum of its parts.”

The book release party is on Wednesday (Oct 10) at 7:30 p.m. where many of these parts will be on display. The party will feature a gallery show of original pages from the book, signings by dozens of the book’s authors, and a hell of a bash, in general.

Check out an animated book trailer: