On Thursday night Aaron and I met up for what will possibly be the last Art Walk for me for two years (my classes will be on Thursday nights).

We hit up the Hive gallery first – as that always seems to be the best. Once again it was the only gallery with any pieces really noteworthy.

We were greeted outside the gallery by a few of these cardboard naked people.

Christopher Ulrich – Night vs. Dawn

Dustin Myers had two timely portraits. The first was called Obama Mama. Dad, I know you’ll love this one.

The next was “Jesus Carlin”

I didn’t catch who did this one. Any guesses as to the message here?

I want to say this piece was by “Mary Smith” – I’m sure that isn’t her name.. it was Mary Something. Anyway, last month she was there in person making some of the other pieces that were up on the wall. Her sketching skills and tonal skills are great – but all her pieces look unfinished to me (including this one). Her work almost exclusively features women, but usually in a more figurative cartoonish sense – so this piece stuck out (cough cough and you all know how much I hate beautiful Asian women cough cough).

Brandi Read – Untitled. This was a piece in a series of very small (I think this was one inch by one inch) portraits that were encased in frames bigger than the artwork. Very good use of the teeny tiny brushes though. All of us painters have these dainty little brushes, but they hardly see any use – but she surely used it for the whole painting here. That and well… again… I just hate Asian women so much and that is probably why this one stood out.

“Exodus.” This new genre of constructed art using doll heads is becoming pretty popular. Not sure how I feel about it. Some of them are very cool looking (like the one here and from my post a few months ago) – but some are sort of lame.

Brian Smith – Untitled. This is very reminiscent of Beksinski, isn’t it?

Back on the main drag we came upon one of the streets lit up. Not sure if this was for the walk or for christmas.

As expected, this artwalk was a bit of a downer. There were far less people than before and a few of the big galleries were closed (for no apparent reason). However, there were more performing musicians than ever before. There was the regular drum circle and reggae band, but there was also this band of mountain music white guys. The guy with the harmonica also played a washboard sometimes. There were also a few live jazz musicians (at least two different saxophone players) that weren’t there before.

We stopped by the Phyllis Stein gallery again. She had the same Rachel Maxi “urban scenes” paintings that were there last time (which we thought were okay), but because none of the hipster doofuses showed up to look at that stuff, she had to bring back some of the trash. At the back of the gallery were five pieces that were not even homages to Roy Lichtenstein, but blatant rip-offs. I fail to see the point in doing a piece EXACTLY as another artist would do it – especially in the case of Lichtenstein who in no way was showing off any artistic skills in the process. Accompanying these were two pieces by an artist that the Stein had featured in the past. We decided we’d come up with a new term for these atrocious ugly things (see below):

We named this genre: Hipster Vomit

Next to the Stein there was a new gallery that wasn’t open last time. They had a pulled pork mobile making sandwiches and also fruit salads in coolers. There were only a few pieces of art, which made us ponder if the “gallery” was a gallery or a restaurant gimmick. I took a picture of the lackluster piece below because it is very similar to what I’m planning to do. In fact, I just finished stretching five canvases on Sunday that I plan to use in this manner (a combination of drawing and painting – but with no gesso applied to the surface first).

Back on the main gallery drag the larger more upscale galleries mostly featured the same pieces they had last time. One gallery on the corner called Phalax (or something) was apparently closing and asked for tax deductible donations from patrons. A lot more galleries had DJs spinning this time. I guess this is indicative of the commercialization of the event. The large hall that used to have live music and then was converted to a bar still had the live music – but not a lot of art… and the music was pretty bad:

Another gallery had a live DJ and two “modern art” pieces. Absolute crap…

Another gallery had a few pieces that looked very similar to what I do. Here is one (although the painting was so reflective it is hard to see – I was NOT using flash):

In the same gallery was another eye-rolling waste of paint…

Maybe someone who pays attention to Amy Winehouse could clue me in to what this even means….

Outside this same gallery there are always portrait artists on the ground. Usually some attractive young woman is up for the 15 minutes of public attention. Yesterday, however, there was a much larger crowd as the subject of the portrait was a crazy looking old woman. I can’t tell you how hard it was to get a shot of this as there were several photographers crowding the artist. This shot was actually taken from behind the glass window of the gallery (which is why you see the reflection of paintings).

On our way back to the bus stop we stopped at the cafe – which now ALSO has a live DJ. This brought in a lot more customers, which makes no sense to me – as Aaron and I had a hard time carrying a conversation because the beatz were so loud.