Ryan ChartrandAs most of downtown closed its doors Friday night, a few galleries blazed with light and conversation as Art After Dark kicked off the month of October.
Organized by Arts Obispo, the San Luis Obispo County Arts Council, Art After Dark is held the first Friday of every month from 6 to 9 p.m. This month 16 different downtown businesses participated in the event. In addition to galleries, other shops like Linnaea’s caf‚ joined in.
The two busiest locations were the Hands Gallery and the Art Center, each packed with people looking at the featured work while eating hors d’oeuvres and drinking wine.
A crowd favorite was the Hands Gallery, where sculptures by Phoebe Palmer were displayed. The creatively and colorfully designed sculptures were of animals.
Palmer said she got the idea to create these “Benign Beasties” (as the Hands Gallery titled the collection) from a public art piece she worked on with another artist. After creating a dragon’s head for that project, she made the choice to continue.
“I decided I might as well make a series of them because they are so much fun,” Palmer said.
Palmer described the collection as entertaining and said you don’t have to take the pieces too seriously.
Since the collection includes dragons, squirrels and other furry creatures, the subject matter is light and unique. Each piece has an interesting colored glaze that makes it individual.
“It took me about six months to put the collection together, but I was working on other things at the time, so I’d put together an odd one here or there,” Palmer said.
Although the crowd was mainly comprised of older community members, a few Cal Poly students wandered in throughout the night.
In the Hands Gallery, Dane Tiemeier, a mechanical engineering junior, said he had not heard anything about Art After Dark before he came downtown Friday night and saw signs displayed in front of various businesses.
“I saw the sign and decided to step in and see what was being shown here,” Tiemeier said. “It is fairly interesting and I might have to look around at some of the other galleries now.”
Many students that wandered into galleries throughout the evening had similar motives, having already been downtown and just stopping in once they saw the signs and the lights.
Each location featured a small sign with the Art After Dark logo, either standing outside the door or on the window to let people know they were participating.
At the Art Center, the 2007 Plein Air Painting Festival works were displayed. The many participating artists painted scenes from across the Central Coast, capturing everything from Morro Bay to a train passing through San Luis Obispo.
The paintings were on display at the end of the week-long festival that celebrated painting done in the open air throughout the area. They were being displayed a final time before they were scheduled to be sold Saturday at a live auction. The festival is an annual event that is always a favorite with locals because of the many beautiful paintings it generates.
The next Art After Dark will be held Friday, Nov. 2 from 6 to 9 p.m. The specifics of what each gallery will be showing have not been announced yet but should be available within the next few weeks.
To find out about upcoming Art After Dark artists and locations, visit www.sloartscouncil.org/aftrdark.html