After work I hurried downtown to meet Alan and Sam for the Art Walk.  This month was not as good as last month.  Strangely, a few galleries didn’t even stay open past 8pm. 

Here are a few of the highlights and low lights:

At one of the buildings (this one had a political exhibit in October the last time it was open) there was a motorcycle exhibit.

Just down the block was the infamous “traveling art gallery;” a gallery made inside of a truck.  The guy at the steps said “Everybody said that last time we were the best gallery.”  Take a look at their centerpiece below and let me know if you think they’ll take that honor for June:

Next up we went to Phartika (or something like that) gallery on the corner.  As always, the art is mediocre, but this gallery has more art snobs stuffed in than any other.  At the back was a guy playing a strange instrument.  Despite looking like a Roman shield this thing actually sounded like a combination of a classical guitar and theramin.

I don’t know what these girls were selling, but I wasn’t buying..

and I especially wasn’t going to be buying if they were selling this Mike Rivero thing…

Around the corner was the “upstairs” gallery.  There were a few things there that I kind of liked… and I thought I photographed the artist names, but apparently I only got the names of the pieces, so I’ll just list these without any info.

I couldn’t decide if I liked this one or not:

There were a few of these cool blurry tree paintings by a girl named Michelle (something).

The gallery had a DJ (a lot of galleries are doing this now, and it gets annoying when they get loud).

At another gallery we were treated to this masterpiece:

my god… stairs… that go nowhere… so groundbreaking!

This Deborah Martin large painting was decent though:

At a nearby small gallery (the one by Phyliss Stein that has all the pornographic books and comic books) there was a photography exhibit about cosplay – and to make it more real they had a girl in cosplay herself, although her costume looked more like just a regular goofy goth girl one… shame I couldn’t get a better shot.

Next we came across a very ornate building that perhaps used to be some kind of theater (unclear).  There was a band performing in a large room with a screen in front of them.  On the screen was a projection of a puppet that someone was jiggling around in front of the light of the projector.  I’m sure it seemed more impressive in their imagination.

Even the Hive was dissapointing this time.  A lot of the usual painterly work was replaced by “sculptures” of found objects, silhouette cut-outs, etc.

This painting was kind of Beksinski-ish I thought:

The next door Infusion Gallery wasn’t great either.  They seem to be getting worse every time.  Here are some $1500 paintings…

   

And here are some steals for a thousand dollars…

 

Walking back from the Hive to the main hub of the artwalk (around 5th and Main) we saw this.  There was construction going on, so this had to be unintentional -but I’ll be damned if this wasn’t the best sculpture we saw all night… the heavy crane arm resting inches above the finely sculpted hood…life kept in such a precarious balance… 

A few doors down we came upon a small gallery with a performer.  I don’t know if she was trying to imitate Judy Tenuta or not… but whatever she was doing it wasn’t very good.

Back at the main hub the former parking lot had grabbed the band that usually sets up across the street in front of Phartika gallery.  They were once again doing their extended reggae edition of AfroMan’s “Because I got High.”

A lot of what was being sold and what was demonstrated in the lot was not great, but Michael Pukac had moved his live painting demonstration from the “upstairs gallery” to here:

Down into the deep end of the parking lot was the same “street artist” that is usually further down the block past the theater.  I think he figured out that the parking lot allowed him more space to “perform” than the sidewalk.  I always wonder if this guy has any work in the galleries, or if he is just doing these portraits (maybe, because he has obviously perfected it).

It was dissapointingthat there wasn’t a lot of good stuff on the art walk this time, but it does give me more motivation to continue with my own work.  I’m debating starting to post my “works in progress” on this blog like so many others do on theirs.  I’ve done 8 or 9 paintings in the last two months, and I’ve always got something in the oven.  I just finished four 2’x4′ paintings and now I’m working on personal portraits.  My intention is to paint enough 9″x9″ wood panel portraits to fill up a wall.  The wall will be filled with all the people (or at least some) that influenced my life.  Since our personality is made up partially from our interactions with others I’m thinking that once it is done it will be a collective self-portrait, as all these people made up some small part of me.