It’s time again for the annual celebration of everything sci-fi and out of this world.
This Saturday marks the 14th year of Sputnikfest at the Rahr-West Art Museum in Manitowoc.
Executive Director Greg Vadney says the annual festival continues to remember the space race of the 1960s and celebrates the science fiction of then and now.
He says there is a connection between space, science fiction, and art as artist Ralph McQuarrie helped create some of the backdrops for the movie Star Wars.
“They were landscapes that eventually became renderings that were used as backgrounds,” he explains. “So, they filmed the characters, and then through some movie magic, you’d have a matte painting in the background that looked like they were looking out onto this vista of another planet. But it was just things that McQuarrie had designed.”
The event is on Saturday (September 9th). The 5K run walk kicks off the event at noon.
There will also be food and entertainment from a DJ and a Milwaukee band called Xposed 4 Heads.
Vadney says there will be many people dressed up in costumes again with costume contests for adults and kids between 4 and 6 pm.
He says he has a favorite, recalling “We had a family that had a hairless cat and they had the cat dressed up at ET in the basket of their daughter’s bike.”
The event ends with a raffle drop at the spot where a piece of the Sputnik IV space vessel landed on the corner of N. 8th and Park Streets in front of the art museum back in 1962.
