FARMINGTON — Artists will gather Saturday, Oct. 31, in the alleyways of downtown Farmington for the first Water Bear Confabulum.

The festival takes place from 3 to 7 p.m. and includes a Trick or Treat Trail from 4 to 6 p.m. in the alleyways and businesses along Main Street and Broadway.

The guest artist, Pigeon, of Bangor will offer a wheat-paste workshop for children at 3 p.m. on the Homestead Bakery wall in the alleyway with Reny’s, Sarah Maline of the UMF Art Gallery said.

Downtown businesses will also hold the First Friday Artwalk for November early. It takes place Saturday in conjunction with the event, she said.

The festival grew from conversations about the downtown having some great alleys which could be interesting places for art, Maline said.

“There will be a range of voices and styles, a mishmash of styles, people and places,” Maline said of sculpture work, video, painters and sound artists. There is no theme for the work.

Just for that day, Pigeon will create a temporary mural on the outer wall of Java Joe’s Corner Cafe on Main Street. It will be an extension of his “Mainers” project, a series of powerful portraits of Mainers who come from other countries, according to a news release.

The wheat-paste workshop will allow children to paint and draw on a thin sheet of paper attached to the Homestead Bakery wall with a paste made of wheat flour, sugar and water. These are expected to stay up for a couple of weeks, she said.

According to the news release, the water bear lives unseen among us and adapts to new environments just as the artists will adapt their work to the alley settings.  A confabulum combines the meanings of confabulation: conversation and the brain’s compulsion to generate fiction to fill absences in memory, according to the release.

While the campus holds a trick-or-treat event for children, there is no organized event downtown, she said. Participating stores and restaurants are listed on the Water Bear Confabulum page at www.artgalleryumf.org

The event is sponsored by the UMF Art Gallery, The Arts Institute of Western Maine and the Farmington Downtown Association.

For more information or to participate as an artist or performer, contact Maline at maline@maine.edu or 207-778-1062.

abryant@sunmediagroup.net