Always learning.

This past Friday I had an opening at BICA Gallery, my first experience of the Bend Art Walk. A lot like Portland's First Thursdays, it was a kick - 4 hours of intensity. I met four artists whose names I'd seen in local reviews but had never encountered in person. We traded ideas and experiences, drank wine and laughed a lot. I had a terrific conversation with one of the other artists in the show about education, art, forest fires, and life. Gallery visitors were open, eager, and willing to ask questions, listen, and talk. I've always enjoyed a good opening and hadn't realized until now how much I've missed First Thursdays.

So . . . the learning part. The paintings with easily comprehensible titles were the ones easiest to discuss, to answer questions about, and to evoke deeper conversations with viewers. The ones with esoteric titles that needed explanation made people's eyes glaze over. One of my first encounters was with a man who didn't pay any attention to the titles or words about the art, but walked up to me shaking his head and laughing and asking about the energy and emotion behind the work. He seemed to get it on a visceral level and didn't need to know anything more. I don't remember exactly what he did for a living, but it was something like car sales or construction. But he had the purest understanding of what was on the canvas - the paint itself without a story. The fact that he seemed to think I was wacko only enhanced my view of the depth of his comprehension.