Second Friday Art Walk
··· Oct 14 2010 · By ···
One of the nice things about San Rafael is that there is a rather strong arts community. This means that there are lots of opportunities to take in, purchase, be inspired by, even exhibit art.
One of the ways that the San Rafael arts community presents its art to the public is by holding a monthly art walk downtown on 4th St. (and some of the surrounding streets). This event is called the 2nd Friday Art Walk, and happens – you guessed it – on the second Friday of each month. It’s put on by Art Works Downtown, a San Rafael arts incubator.
Well, since Dorothy and I are interested in local art, and have missed taking part in things like this since we left Kalamazoo (where they have a monthly Art Hop that is similar to this) we thought it would be nice to head downtown and get our art on.
We didn’t have a lot of time, so we felt it would be best if we stuck to the densest part of the art walk, between C and D Streets on 4th. This worked out good, as we were able to check out a number of galleries and the Art Works facilities. Overall, most of the art was paintings, mixed media, and photographs at most of the places we went. I didn’t take too careful of notes on who the artists art or anything this time, but one of the things that I did notice is that a lot of artists are working in encaustic. For those who haven’t heard of encaustic, it is basically a pigmented bees wax that is layered onto the canvas (or board, or whatever). That layering gives the work a really cool depth. You can also do stuff like transferring things onto it, then covering the transfer with more encaustic medium. You get the picture, I am sure, if not check here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encaustic_painting . Anyway, maybe it is a bit played out as the medium of the moment, but I like how it looks and I even hope to get into a little experimental wax painting some time soon (hands rubbing together)…
One of my favorites is the Folk Art Gallery. I had a nice chat with the owner, Sharon Christovich, who is also an artist (it is indeed obvious that she has an artist’s eye). She really seems to enjoy what she does. They specialize in unique, handmade things that are produced by various native peoples from Mexico to Africa to Peru to the Middle East (and a lot of places in between). One of the things that I enjoy about a lot of the products in places like this is you see a lot of re-use of items that in the USA we typically will throw out. Dorothy pointed out a neat chicken (or cock) made from old plastic bags (hopefully clean). I noticed this door curtain made from strung together plastic bottle pieces, garden hose, and other stuff we normally pitch, or recycle. It’s cool!
There are also some more traditional items like this funny hat that might have been used in some ceremony or celebration that you see in National Geographic magazine.
It’s nice to be part of a community with a thriving local artist scene, and I have only scratched the surface with what D & I experienced here in San Rafael. A few years back we produced a little video about a Cotati based artist 3D Edddy. Needless to say, Dorothy and I are totally looking forward to exploring the art scene all up in this place we call home.
