Gallery Night

Each week or so, I get an email from the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. This lovely museum hosts regular events, most notably the annual Art Fair on the Square. This past week, I stumbled upon their bi-annual Gallery Night. There were 65 sites throughout Madison that had art or events or both. I made a pass through the long list and started to plan my trip geographically. I even had Megs take a look at the list and short descriptions and tell me where to go. All of hers were on my list, but it still was too long by half to hit everything. I kept the list and will be back to visit many of those places during regular hours. It was probably pretty mean to get Megs involved, since she couldn't come with me.

My first stop was to my favorite place in Madison - Anthology on State Street. I was there on a mission - to get cute shower gifts. As is always the problem with gifts, I'm afraid the recipient is also a reader. So, y'all will just have to wait a little bit to see those pretties.

Next, I went to Carta StudioWorks with my friend. My friend is a friend of the artists - does that make me their friend once removed? You have to go check out their website. No really, two of my favorite of Dave's works are on the home page.

http://www.cartastudioworks.com/

I happen to know that Winter Sky (on right) is no longer available. But, I have the benefit of knowing who bought it. I've already tried to wrangle an invitation over to continue to stare at the painting. The one of the left, Heading into Clovis, is absolutely gorgeous in person. From across the studio, it looks like a sheet of copper with a carefully developed patina. Then, you see the sunrise over the horizon. Up really close, you can see at the edge of the horizon, the New Mexico (I assume) mountains. 

Early Spring Marsh (go to the website!) was the first one that drew me in. Like the two above, it's from Dave's landscapes collection. And, like Winter Sky, it uses the gray and red to convey that feeling of water in the early morning. You can read more about Dave's technique on the website, but he uses photographs, mainly of organic nature, to create the art in the computer by layering those photos with colors and texture. From there evolves the scene, rather than being limited by what the camera captured. The website does a better job than my description in describing the process. 

I love art, but rarely find myself staring at the paintings, photos, etc. or coming back to them again and again. Friday evening, I kept coming back over to these works, discovering something new, like the mountains of Clovis, each time I looked.