A Swell Time Was Had By All

Well, I can't vouch for that exactly, but I did have a great weekend that combined two of my favorite passtimes.... drinking and viewing art. First stop was the MIA's Drawing and Print Fair where a bunch of gallery retailers from across the country were selling really great drawings and prints, but I could hardly call it fair. One exceptional print of a Martin Lewis piece was going for *GULP* $840,000.... YIKES!!! I might have missread the thing. Perhaps the original was 840 grrr but that's what was listed inside the matting. Strange thing was, it was in a pile with a bunch of other prints that were all less than a grand. Whatever, I went mainly to look since about 99.99% of the stuff there was way out of my price range. Later that day I went to the St. Paul Art Crawl which was way better since 1) I could actually afford some of the stuff 2) it was all by local artists who were on hand for a chat, and 3) FREE BOOZE!!!

Granted most people were offering only wine (which keeps things classy, of course) but after about a dozen 3 oz. glassfulls everyone there is your best friend. KAS and I came close to spending the rest of the night in one of the loft flats at the Rossmor but at the last second made a well-timed getaway if only to avoid waking up in the ditch somewhere. I must also mention that since this was the first time I've been in downtown St. Paul (as far as I can recall) I can now compare it with Minneapolis. The first thing I noticed was that SP was more laid back. True, one could point out that it's not so much laid back as well.... deserted. I commented on this to one artist who in return said that in general, St. Paul was a bit more easy going than its sister city. He scathingly added, "A lot of people in Minneapolis act like they're in New York." Buddy, I can't say that I don't empathize. Say whatever you want about Minnesota nice, but I come across more pretentiousness living in Whittier than is reasonably expected in an urban environment. Mostly this comes from the affected artist types, who, if you ask me, all tend to look alike in their "non-conformist" attire and bodily mutilation. Not that their is anything wrong with tats and piercings per se, I just don't think that metal and ink makes one an inherently better or more savvy human being, but I could be wrong (doubtful). Strange thing is that I am oddly compelled to study the ironies of the hipster as a social phenomenon. Then again, maybe I'm just dating myself by thinking that thrift store clothing and retro fashion faded out by the late nineties. Apparently I'm not only uncool, but I'm also old. For a eerily ironic footnote to this subject, read what I wrote here.
But I digress. SP actually looked much cleaner and newer as well. Again, perhaps it was just the area I was in but it had a very nice feel to it. Plus, Hulles lives there. Not that these two things are necessarily related. In any event, the art crawl was so awesome I returned on Sunday and bought something... plus I needed a little hair of the dog.