BEST BET

Have you been contemplating the artistic potential of your toaster? Got an urge to spout some poetic couplets? Want to paint a fence? You can do all this and more during a month of festivities in Claremont, where they’re putting on the Fourth Annual Fringe of the Fringe Arts Festival, starting Saturday.

More than 100 events, to be held from Pomona to Riverside and points in between, are scheduled for the festival, which runs through Oct. 13.

The Fringe of the Fringe got its start three years ago as an offshoot of the Los Angeles Fringe Festival, which was originally organized as an artistic component of the 1984 L.A. Summer Olympics.

The Los Angeles Fringe Festival is now known as the Open Festival, running as an adjunct to the Los Angeles Festival. Got that? See related listings, JX.

“There are not enough venues for artists in this area so we really wanted to bring some events here,” explained Marlene Pou, a board member of Pomona’s DA Gallery, the nonprofit arts organization that sponsors the Fringe of the Fringe festival.

The opening ceremony on Saturday begins

with a mask parade in which artists create moving, noise-making sculptures that will frolic around Claremont’s Memorial Park, starting at 8th Avenue and Indian Hill Boulevard at noon. The day will continue with music, airborne art such as kites and balloons, performance art, puppetry in the park and a 40-foot-long fence mural that the public is invited to paint.

On Sept. 22, people are invited to bring household objects, such as the aforementioned toaster, to the DA Gallery in the afternoon and help transform them into objets d’art for exhibit that night.

On Oct. 5, at the Huntley Bookstore in Claremont, there will be a “Night of Full Moon Madness” during which 100 poets will take turns reading short selections from their work.

Periodically throughout the festival, 28 local artists, including Michael Woodcock of Claremont, will open their homes and studios to tours.

Most of the events are free, but some have small admission fees, Pou said. For a schedule of all the events, write the DA Gallery at 244 1/2 S. Garey Ave., Pomona, 91766 or call (714) 397-9716.