Yesterday after work I headed to the NoHo station and hopped on the red line to the art walk. Justin was supposed to meet me there and Cindy as well. Both eventually decided not to come. Perhaps it was for the best as I ended up walking off the map to take more “tall building” photos (I’ll post those on another day). Also – I don’t spend a lot of time staring at art that I think sucks, so sometimes I can go through the galleries too fast when others are with me.

This week there was more art, more people and more “attractions.” There were three or four different live music acts on the street that I ran into. There were street artists as well as street “performers” (a guy with a bunch of clothespins on his face and walking on broken class).

I was pleasantly surprised by the first gallery with a great painting (and only one there) by William Wray, who it turns out worked on Ren and Stimpy, Samuri Jack and even Hellboy.

This was one of the drum circles

A poetry reading in a gallery.

This “life-size” predator made of industrial metal bits was just stuck in the lobby of some high class condo building. No explantion – no title – no cards. A block away I saw a larger than life sculpture of Elvis made of the same metal bits in a closed gallery, the two must have been related.

“coming clean”

Off the regular path – up around Spring and 7th there was a gallery called “the hive.” This was the best gallery I’ve seen in quite a while, with many good artists. One in particular – Brandon Sharkey was really good, and so I had to take photos of his work in case I couldn’t find him online later. Turns out… I can’t find him online and the website for the hive really sucks (so much so that I won’t even link it here). Pity, this guy has talent and needs exposure on the web.

The overall quality of all the art this time was much better. The painters were more “painterly.” The drawers could actually draw (there was one guy at the hive that did really incredible finely detailed ebony pencil portraits of people and skulls and bugs (sometimes mixed together). There was more music, both inside and out as many galleries had live DJs this time. Some of the galleries were so packed that getting in and out was actually a pain and required waiting in line.

For whatever reason many of the galleries decided to put up “sexual” art this month. This meant that I was forced to see a lot of obviously talented painters wasting their talent on things like a painting of the virgin mary pulling up her skirt or jesus rising from the grave with a hard-on. Great… One painter was incredible. He had these incredibly detailed paintings – reminiscent of european realism painters of old. However, his subject matter was just… off. One painting was of a stormy sea with a piece of stone riding a wave. On the stone of course was a carving of two encient persians … having sex… Wasted talent. Someone needs to pull this guy aside and say “hey, it is your TALENT that will make your work stand out – not putting sex in everything!”

Another gallery featured color photography of skinny women poised and placed to look more like little boys. (you knew they weren’t little boys because their breasts were bared) What was the goal there?

I guess I’m just an Art Prude. (notice how both of the paintings I posted above feature nudity – but are well done and not for shock value)