On Thursday night Sam and I headed to the Art Walk.  This Art Walk seemed more enthusiastic than the last one.  Perhaps this was only due to the positive beginning.   Unlike other walks we decided to eat first.  We circled 8th until the clock hit 6 and parking opened up right in front of the Hive.  We walked a few blocks north to the first food truck parking lot at Spring and 5th.

The options at this lot seemed much improved from the other lots, which usually consist of tacos, burgers and “Korean tacos.”   This time we were greeted by Italian food, Greek food, Persian food, seafood and more.  Sam got a pint of clam chowder and I got a lamb plate from Kabob n’ Roll.

For the first time, I have to say the food was delicious.  I had asked for all tomatoes instead of tomatoes and cucumbers – but Sam happily ate the cucumbers they gave me, so that wasn’t a big deal.  What I did like though was that they gave me extra “salad” instead of hummus (which is made with peas, so I can’t eat).  The “salad” was salad greens (the good kind, with kale and stuff like that, not that crappy white chopped lettuce stalks you get at other places)  and chopped tomatoes drowned in olive oil and red wine vinegar (this is how I eat all Persian food, if you don’t know… when I go to Shamshiri I’ll actually sometimes use the entire little bottle of olive oil they put at the table).  In addition to the salad the main part of the dish was a grilled lamb (which was tender enough), red peppers, onions and white rice.  They put a cup of yogurt (?) on top of that and then added pita bread on top of that.  It was really enough food for two.

Here is a photo of the dish from their website:

We walked all the way down Spring to Bang Gallery – which was boarded up and apparently put out of it’s misery.  The gallery across the street didn’t have a lot of new art (just one giant hanging mural), but had a band, Jayar, performing originals and covers (including a Led Zeppelin cover).

We walked a block south to main to the Citizen LA Art Park.

There were a few interesting booths including Branch of Life, the cactus plant guy who makes very pleasant looking arrangements of succulents and cacti proper and sells them for not really that much money.  I’m always tempted to buy some but I don’t want to have to walk around for the rest of the night fighting crowds with a delicate plant.  ….but eventually I really want to get some of these for my house!

I also passed by a booth of wares from Bill Green that were all inspired by The Big Lewbowski.

Including the Duddha rug…

After that we stopped at Urth Cafe (formerly Dead Souls) for a “steamer” and a smoothie before heading to the “upstairs” gallery.  Blue Canvas was sadly nowhere to be found on this art walk, but there was actually an interesting artist at the “upstairs” gallery (this is a first!).   The artist was Eve Kessler, who apparently has a very minimal web presence.  What she does is make little watercolor paintings of goldfish.  I learned a long time ago not to try to photograph the art at the art walk because #1 some galleries don’t like it and #2 most artists have all their work available on the web.  Apparently Eve doesn’t have anything on the web (or is not making it easily discoverable).

This little cropping is about all I could find, but you get the idea I suppose.  Her website is a template that just simply has her short bio and email address… no art.

Across the street from the upstairs gallery was one apartment window featuring a specific timely theme.  I wish I had a “real” camera so I could have made something more significant out of this…

Walking on Spring (or near) we passed the regular Hari Krishnas, African drumming, etc.

and whatever this is…

Outside the Hive Pukac was doing a live painting demo.

Inside the Hive were several crazy characters dressed up in steampunk/pirate attire… like this guy..

There were several good pieces at this show.  There was a large piece by Sean Joyce, an excellent realist painter.  This piece can be seen behind the pirate in the photo above.  Like James Zar, a frequent in the next door Temple of Visions gallery, Sean is one of the old Hollywood matte painters, which demands some serious skill.  Unfortunately I couldn’t find a decent image of the above painting, Eve of Paradise, online.

One of the main Hive featured artists, Patrick Mizumoto, had some very “dream-like” paintings.  There are more/better photos of the works up at the Hive’s web site, but here is one of them on the flyer for this months’ show:

As I walked through the gallery I ran into the proprietor of the Hive.  He shook my hand and said “congratulations.”  I thought it was odd – but I said “yeah, it’s a great show.”  I thought maybe he was referring to my piece being in the outer (first room) part of the gallery, which had only happened once before (in October).  Sam and I were separated momentarily and I met up with her outside a few minutes later.  When she also said “congratulations” I said “wait… for what?”  She informed me that she’d seen a red dot by my work.  For those not in the know, a red dot next to a piece at a gallery means that it has been sold.

It was high on the wall, so I didn’t even notice when I went by earlier and/or Saturday (don’t know when the sale took place).  This is my first piece of art that I’ve ever sold (I think).  The interesting thing is that I drastically reduced my price on this piece to experiment.  I decided to sell this one for $95, which is much cheaper than most other artists would sell a similarly sized piece.   I decided to do this for three reasons – #1 if I make ANY money at all off of these paintings that is a good thing #2 I need to start selling as I’m running out of storage space anyway #3 If I was able to sell something at a lower price that means that someone actually likes what I’m doing enough to pay for it – so maybe now I can all myself a “professional”… and do you know what that means?  It means I’m now in the “business” of selling my art.  Do you know what THAT means?  It means all my art supplies are tax deductible (too bad I bought that expensive easel in 2010, darn!)!

Here is the photo of the piece available on the Hive website: