art|whirled

There is a new blog in Montpelier called art|whirled and it deals with the local art community. It's written by a local artist who is involved in a few different projects to inject more art into our downtown. The three projects she has been blogging about so far are 1) opening an art gallery downtown (this isn't the new gallery near the roundabout but a non-profit gallery organized by local artists), 2) RAGE (an acronym for Revolving Art Gallery Experience) which will place art in existing businesses downtown and 3) restoring the art walk that the now defunct Onion River Arts Council used to organize.

That's a lot to take on. Plus, she's the curator for Capitol Grounds and her own work is currently on display at Langdon Street Cafe. Hopefully, she'll still have time to maintain the blog and create some new pieces.

I've spoken to some local artists who poo-pooed the idea of displaying their art in local businesses but until there are a few galleries in town showing local artists, then RAGE sounds like a good idea.

The tough part of the old art walk was how spread out it was. You really had to drive the "walk" to get to a lot of the artist's studios. Perhaps they could compact it by getting downtown residents to open their homes to the artists and people participating in the walk. It might increase the number of people going on the walk.