Thursday, July 26, 2007

Gallery Walk in the Big City

A May Day, 2007, Oil on Panel, 24x36

I am still feeling the glow from our few days in New York City. Doug and I had such an excellent time with our friends Greg and Nicole, that we are almost ready to move to Madison to be with them forever. Well, not really, but I do so wish we lived near each other again.

We got into the city kind of late on Sunday and on Monday we woke up to torrential rains and very cool temps. So the four of us were all pretty much soaking wet when we got to the Ameringer-Yohe Gallery, which was our first stop. I wanted to see the pastel show by Wolf Kahn and so we spent some time there. But I must confess that while the work was nice, it didn't really blow me away or anything. It seemed a bit rote, which I was disappointed in. A few of the more abstract pieces were lovely but once I enjoyed those, I preferred to sit on a bench with Nicole and catch up on what our kids are doing. I suspect we were some of the more irritating visitors to the gallery that day!

We then visited a few more galleries, none of which I specifically recall, except for Forum Gallery, as we had gotten way too far into chatting to really be thinking about the art we were looking at. However, Doug and Greg were good boys and were actually discussing the art.

The rest of Monday was more walking and talking, more rain, a subway ride, lunch, art and then we spent quite a bit of time at Doug's showroom in Soho. Alas, my gallery was not open and so we made do with looking at one of my paintings hanging in the front window (cool!). Then we had the best pizza ever at Lombardi's in Little Italy. On the way back to our hotels, we cheated death in the most harrowing cab ride any of us had ever experienced. And I am not kidding either.

Tuesday was beautiful, warm, but not hot, and sunny. We decided to go down to Chelsea and go through the galleries there. So we wandered around and I think that all of us were most impressed by Dustin Yellin's show at the Robert Miller Gallery. I loved the sculptures and could see having one in my home. Which is not always the case with much of the work that I have seen in Chelsea (sorry if that offends). Anyway, we were all further impressed to see that most of the pieces were sold and that the artist would be having a hefty payday. Nice!

Oh, and we stopped in at Stricoff Gallery and I was very pleased to see the work of Jeff Cohen (former blogger) and Neil Hollingsworth. Beautiful, in real life too! Also, I was completely transfixed by this piece.

Unfortunately, around 2pm we had to leave Greg and Nicole in Chelsea to continue on without us. Doug and I drove to his showroom to pick up a few things and so I could stop in and visit my gallery for a few minutes. A half hour and a $60 ticket later, we zipped out of the city just ahead of rush hour traffic.

And while we were having a crappy rest area lunch we found ourselves longing for the nice lunch we could have been having with Greg and Nicole, discussing art and politics, comparing notes on our kids, laughing.

Us country folks were thisclose to turning around to go back to the city....

4 comments:

Chris Rywalt said...

Was the cab ride more harrowing than our ride together?

I never did finish writing up our gallery tour.

Tracy Helgeson said...

Well, there was no actual physical contact with a truck during the cab ride:)

And, yes, I have been waiting patiently for part 2 of that day...

Karen Jacobs said...

Take it from me, there's a whole other life after kids. Easy enough to make up for lost time once the last one leaves home. Then move back to the city or whatever. You are giving them a priceless growing up experience on the farm... but when they're grown, that block is checked and it's your turn.

Tracy Helgeson said...

Karen, I suspect that I will NOT be a mother with empty nest syndrome. Way too much to do when that last one leaves us!