After driving around interminably looking for a parking spot I finally found one. I was literally just about to give up.
A few minutes later, I couldn't believe I'd almost skipped out on this. It's such a great party.
And so much great art.
The other day I was at City Market (another frustrating place to try and park) and overheard a woman on her cell phone describing where she was at. "I'm at the most amazing, huge farmer's market..."
And that's exactly what I think of the First Friday art walk in the Crossroads. It even has a small farmer's market of its own (Bad Seed).
I didn't buy any heirloom tomatoes at Bad Seed, but they looked so good I could have. If I weren't drowning in the same at home. 36 vines might have been overkill, or it was since we had a good growing season. If the weather had been like the last couple of years, it would have been about right. And too much is better than not enough.
We actually started out in Midtown at the Buttonwood gallery where I met Bob Walkenhorst showing his paintings. Bob Walkenhorst of the Rainmakers, I didn't know he was a visual artist as well. Jeff Porter was showing stuff at Buttonwood as well, not sure if any other people you'd think of as musicians who were showing there.
We wound our way through a bunch of galleries, all of which seemed to have something surprising on show.
There were lots of bands on offer, too, set up on sidewalks. And food that ranged from grocery store vegetable trays to high end catered fare, almost all accompanied by inexpensive table wine and the occasional Boulevard beer.
Probably the highlight, art-wise, was at the Leedy-Voulkos, where Stretch was showing. Stretch of Grinders fame. I've met him before, but in the Grinders context, not so much in the artist at an opening role. He had a pint of hooch in his pocket but didn't seem to be drinking it himself, it was for pushing on people who walked up to meet him. "You look like you could use a hit," he'd say, holding the pint out to see if someone would take it. Pretty freakin' smooth, I have to say, if you're going to market yourself as an artist, that's the way to do it.
His art had an awfully violent subtext to it. Lots of guns, brass knuckles, vaguely ballistic looking items, and so on.
I took a picture of this woman at Leedy. She was looking so exhausted and forlorn, and I thought I was being sneaky but right before I could open the shutter, she saw me and smiled. So much for great moments in street photography.
I have noticed when it comes to photographing people in a public space that shooting more actually puts folks at ease more than shooting less. They might notice at first hearing a shutter, seeing a big-ish SLR, but when they decide you're shooting everything they tune you out mostly.
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