Saturday, May 12, 2007

First Friday

Clickable Thumbnails Below
The 1st Friday of every month means all of the art galleries, photo studios and related places on South Alamo Street in "SouthTown" are open at night, free, in a block party type atmosphere.
Food and jewelry booths line the street, live music and art is performed, and thousands of people roam around soaking up the vibe.

The west end is anchored by the Blue Star Art Complex, where I shot these first photos.
Multi-media is the norm, so you never know what you'll see or how it'll be presented.
I think of this piece as "twisty bits on white" since I didn't bother to learn the name or artist--sorry. I liked the shadows. Other twisty bits were on the floor beneath it, hopefully on purpose and not through destructive audience interaction.


These two are from a piece called "A Minor Gesture".

I was always a fan of the intricate and repetitive art the speedfreaks in San Francisco used to make in the '60s and '70s. I got the feeling a similar inspiration was responsible for this, but what do I know about art? Not much, beyond the old saying that ends with "...but I know what I like".
I preferred the twisty bits.

The room with it's art displayed on computer monitors had the biggest crowd, staying for the longest time.
Big surprise in this era of TV and computers ruling the masses.
I wasn't sure about the rules regarding photography here; since I was the only person with a camera I tried to be stealthy but when I saw this scene I busted out my big flash and bounced it off the ceiling and the wall on the left.
Twice.
To be honest, I was feeling a little smugness and contempt, and was in the mood to turn the viewing of "art" into a bit of my own art.
I feel like I succeeded not because this photo is great or anything, but because it was the 2nd exposure and I don't think a single person tore their eyes from the screens after my flash lit the hell out of the whole room the 1st time.

LCD screens rule the earth, and if nukes started dropping people would respond by searching for video footage on YouTube.


More on 1st Friday soon.
Recently Views Of Texas passed the 20,000 hits milestone.
Scroll down to the bottom and see the counter for yourself.
I figure I get around 30 visits a day, about half from search engines and the rest from a few dozen repeat visitors who check-in daily/weekly/monthly.
My tracking service (StatCounter) tells me a lot about you regulars, from your OS and browser choices to your screen resolution and ISP.
Just so you know, I use Win2000, Opera 9 and 1024x768.
Thanks for taking the time to visit.
I appreciate it very much.

Please feel free to take this opportunity to spam my readers with your website or blog's URL.
Just leave a comment.
Keith

1 comment:

Matthew Robertson said...

Congratulations on passing 20,000 -- I think you'll overtake me in a few more weeks, which is awesome and well-deserved. I won't even mention that you started VoT later; that'll be our secret.