Art Allies rocks The Communitech Hub

My good friend, Jacqui Murphy, of Art Allies rocked The Communitech Hub down at The Tannery tonight with a really great show of artists who are represented on the Art Allies web-portal-of-local-art-goodness.  Jacqui’s vision of connecting local art collectors with local artists is really getting traction.  Bravo! and thanks, Jacqui, for putting in the huge amount of work to bring this to the community.

The incomparable James Nye (left) was there with oil paintings inspired by his NYC trip.  James is opening a show at the Accelerator Centre on Wed, Feb 23, so be sure to check that out!

The place was jammed when I got there halfway through.  There’s Anum (right) chatting.

Amy Ferrari (red hat) was showing her amazing acrylic paintings and gets my award for best take-away swag of the night in the form of a postcard-sized fragment of painting (from one of the classes she teaches) that is stamped with her contact info on the back.  Cool.  Amy has a show opening at the Cambridge Centre for the Arts on Fri, Feb 4.

I had a great talk with David Hoover about his work.  David is a street artist who is (also) tagging canvas now and has a show coming up Sat, Feb 19 in another really cool venue: The Sign Depot, where David works by day with Peter Moir and his crew creating some of the most engaging signage in the region.  Fascinating to learn a little more about that domain.  Thanks to Lisa MacDonald, promoter extraordinaire, for pointing me at David’s work.

I also got to talk with Mark Walton who is opening a show of his photographs on Fri, Feb 11 at The Button Factory.  Love the pic on the Shift show poster and the way Mark is capturing photos of our dynamic landscape.  Feels very immediate.  Good stuff.

I met John Hofstetter just as the show was wrapping up, and he showed me some photos of some of his sculptural work.  I love the technical details of construction as much as the aesthetic.  Ever heard of paper clay: a mashup of clay slip and paper pulp.  John moulds it, pierces it, applies various treatments, and mounts it on 1/8” steel.  You gotta see it.

And as KW luck would have it, I got into a chance conversation at the coat rack on the way out with a maker outside of the pure art domain.  Ron Daniels, chemist, business guy, and most importantly, designer and maker of RC planes has done some fundamental and deep aerodynamic research.  A quick google search on Ron Daniels RC turns up a lot of happy customers who have built and flown Ron’s kits.  We talked about the evolution of battery, motor, and ESC technologies as well as the boon of rapid prototyping tools like laser cutters and affordable CNC.  I invited Ron back to kwartzlab for our regular Tuesday Open Night where we chatted more about different types of wing stalls and drew a small crowd.

Spread the word about Art Allies and support the make-o-sphere.

Happy making,

DW