Gallery Walk

It is the first Saturday of the month.
That is when Oshkosh holds Gallery Walk.
This was our first time ever attending Gallery Walk. It's spring, and I'm just dying to do something - anything out of the ordinary now that the snow has melted and I no longer want to hibernate!

I received an E-mail the other day from Crescent Moon saying they were planning to participate in the Gallery Walk as well. That in itself is pretty damned cool. You see, Crescent Moon is a salvage resale company in down town Oshkosh. I just love stopping in there when we get the chance. J and Julia have some very awesome ideas to offer when it comes to making use of reclaimed salvage items. And well, somehow during one of our visits, we got to talking about White Chicken Chili, and I promised Julia that I'd drop off my recipe for her one day. I kept my promise, and it happened to have my E-mail address on it, so now I'm on their mailing list as well. And I'm cool with that. They have some groovy stuff. In fact, she's going to call me with a price on a 1940's Oshkosh City Directory. I collect those and don't have one quite so old, so I hope it will be a good price.

Gallery Walk was quite fun. Many of the participating businesses had big signs outside their shops so that people would come in and browse the art they were featuring this evening. Some of the art is actually quite good. Some of it.... well.... perhaps you really have to like that sort of stuff...

I managed an Art Gallery for 7 years. I got used to saying "Oh, yes! You wonderful taste!" When I was actually just trying to make a sale. I will never really understand most abstract art. Nor will I understand why those who create abstract art think it needs to be on a gigantic canvas. I secretly believe that most artists who create abstract art probably lack the ability to do realism in any form.

Another exciting part about attending Gallery Walk is that you are able to go into many stores that are never open to the general public, or simply are never open at all. And now it makes sense to me. Some of those stores are rented by artists and they use them as their art studio. They paint and paint and paint until the first Saturday of each month, and then they slap an obscene price tag on their work and open their doors. Can you tell I wasn't impressed?

And speaking of obscene, silly me, we wander into one gallery, and I suppose I ought to have expected it, but I was so busy trying to make out what the artist had painted when suddenly The Child yells out "Boobies!!!" and I look at the wall opposite to the one I'm looking at and it's all S&M art. I had to quickly usher The Child out of the gallery, eyes shielded, hoping he didn't take in too much of the scene before his exclamation.

On the whole, I'm glad that we went. It was fun. Oshkosh does have a few very promising artists. And Down Town has some very nice store owners. And we got some fresh air and exercise. So it was worth it!