'Tis The Season...
For First Friday and Art Basel, Cell Phones, Bonsai and Book Sales



Well, billion-eyed audience, if you've been following along you with the story thus far, you know that this image of exuberance and annoyance signifies that it's our art monthlies, First Friday in Richmond. This picture was taken (not by me) at a long-ago opening at the Three Miles Gallery which is where the now busy downtown bistro, Tarrant's, will be receiving guests tonight in its expanded seating room.

The girls better wrap'em up, it's cold and rainy today though by this evening, the precipitation will have slacked off though the temperature will not be as hot as they are.

Exotica on the Agenda

Among the exotica on the agenda tonight is a demonstration of traditional Balinese puppetry at TheatreIV; Transfiguration: The Art of Bonsai at gallery5 -- at which nobody will be naked, or so I'm told--too prickly--and some of the trees that will be on display are, well, 400 years old. That puts things into perspective, doesn't it? The new Ghostprint Gallery has an introductory group show and Transmission may take the coveted Too Hip For Words prize with its show by Amanda Marie, An Unfinished Story. She is a frequent contributor of illustration for magazines such as Juxtapoz, The Onion, and Syntax Magazine, and other stylish publications with type-points too small for my fading eyes, thus, meaning I'm out of their demographic. (Although a yoot remarked to me, "Just get better glasses.")




I keep thinking if I buy these publications or view their web sites, that somehow an electro-digital-alchemical reaction will occur between my fingertips and their pages, or in some kind of weird exchange of information within the light refracted by the digital images, and the years will begin to slip away from me. I'll start wearing knit caps with dangly things and develop a hankering for Pabst Blue Ribbon (as demonstrated by this image via SLOG ) Alas, never happens. Still, I'm looking forward to seeing what Amanda Marie does, live and in person, so to speak.

And there are of course all the other gallery spaces, on West Main and Broad streets, with all their plethora of plethoras.

Amieo and cell phones

Meanwhile, where is my partner-in-art-for-life? Well, in Miami, for the Biggest First Friday of Them All, the Art Basel Miami artgasm and extravaganza of marketplace economics. If you're going to catch big fish, you gotta go where the big fish are, and I want my Grande Louvre to hook a sturgeon, or perhaps a pilot whale. A passel of Richmonders have taken a flyer "down there" and I'm wondering if they'll find each other and if the collected energy may cause a geyser to erupt on Biscayne Boulevard.

The image below looks like it could be Richmond; but it's a portion of the Art Basel Experience, via Bloomberg. This is the opening of the NADA exhibit during a New Museum benefit, December 4.



So I put Amie O. on a jet airliner on Wednesday, amid snow, and got to communicate with her as she passed out of the security clearance via our new cell phones. My first ever airport terminal cell phone chat! Yes, billion-eyed audience, I have joined the 20th century, seven years late. It takes pictures and may make Julian fries, if I knew which buttons to push. I'd be quite the self-referential blogger if I had someone take a picture of me and my Razor and posted said image here.

Maybe later.

In the meantime, I'll be signin' and sellin' True Richmond Stories, tomorrow, Dec. 8, at Book People, between 3-5 p.m., though I'm not at the moment on their web site. It's 536 Granite Avenue, south of the intersection of Patterson and Libbie.