A lot of people don’t get art or think there’s a certain honor in bragging about how much they don’t get it. Maybe in the early 1960s, enthusiastic ignorance was cool – it meant you weren’t an elitist or part of The Establishment and that you were a proud, hardscrabble, anti-everything, non-showering bohemian or some other sort of unemployable bum.
Today, though, you don’t have to have a degree in art history from Yale or even from some random state college in Northwestern Pennsylvania to be able to appreciate non-kitschy, contemporary painting, sculpture, or wacky installation art. Just an open mind (and access to Google). And for Gallery Night, a citywide art celebration that takes place every spring and fall, you don’t even need an open mind.
A thirst for knowledge – and free booze – will do. This Saturday, from around happy hour until the wee hours of the morn, about two dozen local establishments – including conventional and temporary galleries, antique stores, and the local museums – will invite the unwashed into their places of business to breeze past some art and partake in free hors d’oeuvres, beer, and wine. The point of Gallery Night is to remind us yokels of the Fort’s thriving art scene. And maybe sell some stuff, too. There’s no way anyone could visit even half of the places in a single night and have any semblance of respectable fun. Here are some recommendations – not based on the quality of art on display but purely on party potential.
Start in near-Arlington at F6 Gallery, a ragtag hole in the wall in an office park off West Division Street. Featuring work from more than a dozen local underground artists, Content has been curated by Fort Worth conceptual photog Kerrie Conover and will also have some DJ music going on, with everything happening between 6 and about 10 p.m., Gallery Night’s usual official hours of operation. F6 people are young, friendly, and hip, and the location – right off the main drag but obscured from passing traffic by a row of low-lying buildings – makes partying there seem somewhat dangerous, in a fun, house-party kind of way, not dangerous like Indiana Jones or Alien.
After an hour or so at F6, work your way back toward town. You’ve got two solid options, depending on your mood. All dressed up and feeling suave and classy? Hit William Campbell Contemporary Art for Abstracted Reflections by local multi-media artist Julie Lazarus. The inside of Bill Campbell’s is small, especially compared to the parking lot out front where a lot of folks like to mingle. Get there early. Bill Campbell’s usually burns hot for a few hours and then – poof! – there’s just art (good art, though). All dressed up and feeling suave and classy – and amazingly good-looking and impossibly brilliant and 10 feet tall because you’ve already had too much to drink?
Swing by Gallery 414, where MFA candidate at the University of North Texas, Annie Arnold, will display her multi-media explorations into counterfeit celebritydom as part of Your Life More Enviable. The crowds are typically small but extremely friendly, happy, and talkative. Everyone there will love you and want to have your children. A similar though no less dynamic show will take place at Studio 5, where photorealist painter Jesse Sierra Hernandez and conceptual artist and photographer Christopher Blay will exhibit some of their new work. The crowning piece will be Blay’s “Time Machine,” an interactive head-trip built out of found objects, including a pair of salon-style, chair-mounted hair dryers.
A great place to wrap up any Gallery Night is Artspace 111, the 30-year-old art institution that used to be a grungy, glorified studio but that now is a bona fide gallery/sculpture garden/patio-party place. Inside will be a group show featuring big-timers like Ed Blackburn, Daniel Blagg, Dennis Blagg, John Frost, John Hartley, Nancy Lamb, Jim Malone, Jo-Ann Mulroy, and more. Artspace usually attracts the biggest, most diverse crowd. And by “diverse,” I mean “rich, poor, young, old, and knowledgeable about art, and, happily enough, not so knowledgeable about art.” Sham to Become Poag Mahone’s As first reported last week on Blotch, the Weekly blog, Shamrock Pub will become Poag Mahone’s in a couple of weeks.
Matt McEntire, who owns the Sham/Poag building in addition to the adjacent 50-space parking lot – and the nearby building at the corner of 6th and Carroll streets, the current location of the Bronx Zoo – has leased the Sham building to three people: two Sham bartenders – Chris Ledbetter and McEntire’s stepson, Will Wells – and a manager at Reata, Glen Keely.
Other than the Sham building, McEntire’s little real-estate empire is made up of relatively new acquisitions. McEntire will spend the next year remodeling the Bronx Zoo, whether or not Bronx Zoo owner Tommy Gallant decides to renew his lease. The only building in the vicinity not part of the McEntire Empire is on the actual corner of West Seventh Street and Carroll, the future home of the third and hopefully final incarnation of the popular Westside hang-out, the 7th Haven. – Anthony Mariani
Contact Last Call at lastcall@fwweekly.com.
