Lookin’ For Art in All the Wrong Places
First of all, I want you to know how much I appreciate your reading this blog. I am always amazed when people I would barely suspect of reading an art blog tell me that they read this thing. Amazing! I hope I am making your time worthwhile.
We- meaning my husband, my mother, and I- recently returned from a car-and-rental-truck trip from Austin, TX to Huntsville, AL.
Our eldest daughter and her husband recently moved to Huntsville from Rochester, New York, and we were delivering some old family furniture to their new apartment. The furniture wanted painting, so after a trip to the paint store, we got to work. Lots of detail, lots of time.
We were all working steadily to do as much unpacking and organizing as we could in the amount of time we had, as well as finishing the two-coats-of-paint project. This little almost-caricature ballpoint pen sketch of my elderly mom sinking into the sofa at the end of a long day really tells the story for all of us.
Roberta and Her Cola
There wasn’t much time for sight-seeing, but we knew we could spend a couple of hours at the NASA museum in town, looking at rockets. The early space-flight technology looks quaint from this vantage point in time, although the big baby shown below is still impressive.
Saturn V
photograph by Bob Bridge
At least three institutions of higher learning educate the city, but the visual arts do not seem to be a high priority at any of them. I saw no advertisements or tourist-town notices of art galleries.
After returning home to Austin and purchasing my August issue of Art in America, the annual issue which is devoted to art galleries and museums in every state, I checked to see what is listed in and around Huntsville. The only listing for the city is the Huntsville Museum of Art. It looks like it is thriving, with an expansion of the building underway. But I wonder if there are any galleries or art collectors in the area? In fact, the whole state of Alabama has only 15 listings in the August issue.
Who out there knows about visual arts in Alabama? Are there more galleries which are simply not listed? Do Alabama artists have to show in other states due to lack of local interest?
In my home studio, I am at work on several new mosaics using stained glass, colored cement, crash glass, vitreous tile, asphalt gravel, local rocks, and glass blobs.
Lynn….I love that sketch you did of your mom! You really did capture the moment! Sorry….no knowledge of Alabama…
Hi, CM! Thanks for your comment. I have been a bit out-of-the-loop with the blogosphere lately, but I’m headed over to check out your site right now. Anyone else want to come along, too?
We paid a brief visit to Montgomery this summer, but I didn’t see much of an art presence there either. IDK…maybe Birmingham? I did take note of seeing work by artists from Alabama when visiting galleries in Charleston and Asheville!
Along those lines, I’ve had artists here in Austin say they can’t sell their work in town, but they do very well out-of-state. I guess being “foreign” gives them cachet?