Working Artisan Works

Last week was a lovely spring break and an excellent time to go exploring one of the well known art "galleries" near my hometown. ARTISANworks is its name and selling art is their game sort of, more on that in a moment. Several people have told me how amazing this place is and that it's the greatest art place ever with so much to see  and something new every time you look.

Thus the exterior and interior of the front lobby to ARTISANworks. Yes it would be difficult to spot the place if they hadn't painted the building teal, yes the entrance isn't very obviously delineated, yes it is that dark inside, yes there is that much stuff around and some of it is not artwork.

You are at least allowed to take photographs and I have here the "safari" set up next to the front desk, the main event room (I think it's called vertigo heights on the map) and then at the end of some hallway where you can see an example of one artist's work which is to reproduce items in wood. In this case its a ford truck from the 20s or so....

Here it's a four foot pencil sharpener next to the actual object peeking out on the pedestal to the right. I don't know who the artist is exactly, since much of the work is unlabeled or not clearly labeled. Rather frustrating when you want to know who did a particular piece and quite a problem when you have art ranging from Terry Gilliam-esque clouds to full on paintings and sculptures mounted/hanging from the ceilings much like these:

There are also artist's studios around the building from which you can deduce who is where on the pecking order based on size and location of their space. But, on this particular weekend no one was actually at work in them. Speaking of studios, ARTISANworks feels like someone took an average studio with all the nicknacks and interesting junk artists tend to keep around their work spaces and expanded it to encompass a whole building. It results in stuff ranging from as big as a working firetruck from the 60s down to decades old bottles of developer chemicals from Kodak.

The sad truth of the matter is that certain people's jewelry benches here at the college have more interesting things on them and they have the bonus of being ordered. True, you personally may not know what that order is but everything clearly has its place. There is no logical layout at ARTISANworks, probably an indication that they only add items and don't take things down. I'm not asking for a neatly ordered museum display, I'm asking for some guide post, some marker in this tidal wave of stuff. Many of the rooms and areas of the building are themed, but none of them are obvious upon walking in, except for the Frank Lloyd Wright style room. 

All of these complaints are a moot point as ARTISANworks markets itself as a unique venue to hold an event. This ability to rent areas for birthday parties, retirements, and corporate brouhahas gets top billing on both their website and brochures, not the artwork. It's not even a particularly wonderful place to have an event too since there's nothing to keep the general touring public away from your private function. (the state art teacher's association happened to be throwing a party at the same time I went to visit.) Even with these basic issues though I was able to find some interesting things my family and I liked, but coupled with the high price of admission, I don't think there's enough to make me come back again. Next time I think I will try the First Fridays at Anderson Alley instead.

Image dump time in case you can't get enough art in one sitting! Here's a nifty painting hanging from the ceiling,

This is a little shrine to Kodak which is kinda bittersweet given the whole bankruptcy currently going on. 

Once again I don't know who the artist is, but I rather liked the colorfulness and controlled drips and splatter of the watercolors. 

I loved this clay piece that looks like a mermaid sleeping on the sea floor and still don't know who made it or what it's called, but it was one of the few works posted with a price tag. It was 3,000 dollars for the sculpture and 2,000 for the glass top table it was sitting on.

And last but definitely not least in my truncated image tour of ARTISANworks is this wicked cool silver sculpture thing hidden way up top on a shelf in a small room about 1950s dentistry. Its metalsmithing and it's so awesome, completely unexpected, and nicely crafted too!