"Art" Gallery Walk

Originally Posted:
Thursday, July 17, 2008
4:39:00 PM CDT
Feeling Chillin' Hearing Ben Arthur

Art. It’s a subjective subject. Who determines what is art and what is not or who is a master whose name will live on in infamy? There’s no right or wrong answer, just personal taste or an appreciation for technique. I am open minded enough to appreciate a piece for its craftiness while not necessarily liking the piece. That being said, I went on a First Thursday art walk after work with six others in my studio at the beginning of July. I thought we were going to galleries. Real galleries. I’m pretty sure the ring-leader of our merry group said galleries (no air quotes), however, we went to “galleries” (emphasize the air quotes). On the first Thursday of each month shops and galleries of Pioneer Square stay open late for the Art Walk. It’s a bustling evening that brings life to area that is ordinarily quite after 6 pm. As the seven of us walked around looking for the building a friend of one of my coworkers told her to look for, Clint and Rashne took turns giving me the history of Pioneer Square. It’s very interesting. The area is where Seattle started and was wiped out by a fire in the late 1800s. Rather than rebuild directly on top of the burned out sites, citizens accessed the situation and decided it would be best for drainage and other reasons to elevate the streets one building level thereby concealing underground the first floor storefronts of all the buildings still standing. You can take a tour of Underground Seattle and see how the street system was constructed and how the buildings from yesteryear still stand, like preserved at Pompeii.

Back to the art walk… After circling the building several time and finally declaring that the giant vacant looking warehouse had to be it because of the crowd building outside and the amount of people coming and going, we entered. Oh! It was something all right. Floor by floor we climbed six flights, stopping on our way up on each floor to see the “art.” Artists rented space in the building to call their own studio and that’s what was open to the public during the gallery walk. Each studio had its own flair. Some were basic- unfinished divider walls, wood floor, a fluorescent strip light hanging overhead; and others were more “dressed up” with plants hanging on for dear life, dismal curtains, and a sofa or other seating most likely procured through dumpster diving. I swear, many of the “art” pieces would not have been acceptable portfolio pieces to get into art school. There were BAD. Bad, bad, bad. I wouldn’t use them to decorate a tree house if they were given to me by the artist on his or her deathbed. I felt sort of sorry for the good artists because they were trapped in the same building space as the not-good-enough-to-paint-by-numbers other artist wannabes. The good ones were really good and the bad ones were awful. Even as disenchanted as I was with what I was seeing hanging on the make shift walls, it was worth the people watching to be there and get bumped around in the tiny studios. The place was PACKED. Everyone from smartly dressed business people to grunge covered youth were there. And most were toting around either a bottle of wine, a Dixie cup of spirits or a can of some cheap beer. I think I was the only one people watching because everyone else seemed perfectly content accepting the peculiarity of the event as the norm. While taking it all in, I thought to myself, “this is so Seattle.”

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