My art walk started a little early – at lunch I found this yarn owl on the bike path on the ‘yarn bomb tree’. It was nice to see some new yarn creations in town. It was an auger of how much I was to enjoy the art walk later that night.
It was windy and cold – the kind of cold that makes you start planning where to go inside next as soon as you step outside.
At the Center for the Arts there were two show. One was of photographs by the recently retired Gazette photographer Gordon Daniels. The photos were fun to look at – I found myself looking to see if I knew the different locations and trying to identify them based on the buildings or the scenery in the background. There were a lot of people at the show. I think I recognized the mayor of Easthampton.
In the other gallery was a show of watercolor illustrations by Danny Quirk. These were really well done. I’m always amazed at how realism works – how up close you can see all the layers, the brush work, and it seems so simple, but from a few feet back all of that vanishes, and it just looks super-real. Art is just an illusion. There were also marquets for each painting, which included a drawing and color studies and notes about symbolism, light and other details. It was cool to see them. There were these giant berry-like things with the regular cheeses and things in the buffet. They looked like gigantic mulberries. I was afraid to try one.
At Thornes there were some drawings by Michael Childress. They were interesting abstract drawings. Heather and I both liked the same one so we got that one. It has a kind of timeless quality. Michael mentioned to Heather that he has some of his paintings up at the Dirty Truth, so I plan to go over there and check them out. He also had these decks of hand-drawn cards and you could lay them out. Heather was raving about the sweet potato things on the food table catered by Paul and Elizabeths.
At the Trailside Gallery on Strong Ave. was a great show by our friend Todd Sinclair who we hadn’t seen since we lived in Boston. His show was oil painting, color studies, most of them he used an angel as a theme to improvise with. They were really cool and it was a nice experience to see them all together filling the room. I really felt mesmerized by the paintings. I have a portrait he did of me from in Boston, probably from 1994. All I can say is that if you are reading this go over to the Trailside and check out his show.
Then we headed over to Foe where there were some really amazing porcelain sculptures and drawings by Coby Ellison. The process he has to make them (I kind of understood how he explained it) is really intricate and involved. He glazes them and fires them 7 times. They have a look to them that is really unique. There was some old school industrial noise playing while we were there that reminded me of Boston.
At this point it was snowing and really windy and cold so we headed home. I had seen the stuff at the Oxbow by Phil Lawrence and Lydia Kann Nettler earlier in the week, so we just headed home. It was way too cold to walk over there, or over to Market Street to see what was happening there. Anyway, this was really one of the best art walks–we bumped into a ton of the regular ’art walkers’ we always run into, and that is always fun to compare notes and say hi.
