It's BoldPas, Old Pasadena's Free Art Lark

Spend a Saturday strolling the charming area while soaking up the visual wow, all without paying admission.

What to Know

  • Saturday, June 8
  • Noon to 8 p.m.
  • Free

It seems like we're forever trying to jumpstart summertime, or at least the spirit of summertime, even when it is winter and chilly and there isn't a shred of summeriness to be found.

But there's the truth: Summer is currently so close you can almost smell its lemonade-tangy scent, meaning summer-style jumpstarters are now the order of the day.

And if that day is Saturday, June 8, and you happen to be in the neck o' the Old Pasadena woods, as in, around Colorado Boulevard, close to Fair Oaks, you'll find a summer-starter that outshines just about every other alfresco event out there: It's BoldPas: A Day of Art & Play, the area's the annual creative-cool festival.

Let's start with something wholly summery about it: BoldPas is free. As if we need to explain why that puts us all in sunshiny moods.

Two?

It runs into the early evening, another summer-starter of a feature. In winter, outdoor events roll up the carpet in the mid-afternoon, it seems, but not summer. Summer likes nighttime.

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Noon is the BoldPas opening time, 8 o'clock is when it closes, meaning you have eight excellent hours to admire outside and out-sized art installations.

There shall be 17 installations in all, including a piece called "Underwater Dreams" at Gold Bug and "Orbs" at Maude Woods.

Other happy-makers'll festoon the festivities, from pop-up art activities around the alley-historic district and nifty gallery happenings (and some galleries with free admission for the day, like at Robot Remix). 

And will there be live plein air painting here and there? It hardly seems like a Pasadena art party without a dash of that delightful, oh-so-Crown-City style.

This is year three for BoldPas, which we can now call a staple of pre-summerdom around the city's handsome, multi-block old town.

Something free to do, with interesting things to see, that stretches into early evening, less than two weeks before the summer officially arrives?

Yes, we think we are ready to jumpstart summertime's good vibes now, thank you very much, and we won't have to pay a cent to do so, via this visual, imaginative, and uplifting Old Pasadena event.

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