by Garrison Frost

Owing to some unexpected Saturday rain a couple weekends ago, the second day of the semi-annual Brewery Art Walk turned out to be the day to visit. We arrived early, just as various artists were opening up their lofts for visitors. It turned out to be the perfect time to begin because it meant that we were leaving when the big crowds arrived later in the day.

While the Brewery Art Walk is ostensibly about looking at art, it's also about checking out the scene and the urban industrial loft lifestyle. It's impossible to do it without asking yourself whether you could live there. Many, many people seemed obsessed over how much the tenants were paying in rent, so in order to not seem like all the rest, we didn't ask. But we wondered.

My wife, who is a ceramic artist, really enjoyed the ceramic work of Dan Kwian, particularly his ceramic book pages. As a lover of typographic art, I also found it very interesting. Nearby, we found some interesting work by Kirkland Bray, who was painting scenes of freeways and playgrounds on old cabinet doors and covering them with thick coats of resin. As we've said elsewhere, we're intrigued whenever artists use freeways as the subjects of their art, so we were very into Bray's stuff.

Best name encountered: Poppy Dodge. And to make matters better, it turns out that Dodge is fine painter. Her paintings of birds and dishware were quite pleasant.

Other stuff we liked: Linda Lundell had some amazing oils of forests that had us wondering how in the hell they were made. Just beautiful. Jillian Suzanne's graffiti-like paintings of tough urban chicks were great. Gloria Longval's portraits in oil were terrific as usual, as were the wonderfully layered pieces by Guillermo Bert. It was worth the drive just to get another look at Bert's sumo wrestlers.

We also really enjoyed Scott Yeskel's oils of freeways and street scenes. While standing and looking at them, the artist himself approached and introduced himself. I said something stupid about how much I like paintings of freeways, which I'm sure told him that I was a complete freak idiot. He politely drifted away. Anyway, his paintings remind me very much of another artist who works in the same ethereal style by the name of Nancy Crawford. Both mix this dreamy treatment with banal subject matter in a very interesting way.

Again, the best part of going to the Brewery Art Walk is to just walk around the place. The characters are all friendly and interesting, and the general vibe around the place is somewhat inspiring. We even saw Mat Gleason (but didn't get a chance to introduce ourselves). I dare any artist to do the trip and not come back wanting to hit the studio.

(April 29, 2004)

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