Spring Gallery Night and Day in photographic review

A panorama by Robb Quinn at the CoPA show on Gallery Night. Photo by Nicole Peaslee.

It’s kind of amazing.  The world can seem to be coming to an end via one biblical-sized flood, and yet the art galleries are still filled with devoted patrons.  This was the scenario last Friday night and Saturday morning as Milwaukee presented its quarterly Gallery Night and Day.  The weather was unfriendly—but the visual, aural, and performing arts was in high form with a lot of folks crawling the buildings of the Third Ward, East Side, downtown, and other spots.

There was plenty to see and plenty of places to be seen.  From the Mayer Building hosting the CoPA members show and Hanson Dodge Creative hosting Jim Herrington down to the MIAD senior thesis show, the three-block stretch of the Third Ward was lined with umbrellas and folks desperate for parking.  One easy and rambunctious way out of this last conundrum was to take Art Milwaukee’s sold-out “ArtBus” which made various stops at locations like Carte Blanche Studios for a one-act play and Great Lakes Distillery for the Absinthe poster art contest.

The next day, Gallery Day continued by marking the start of Milwaukee Area Resource Network’s (MARN) Art Treasure Hunt across the city, which will continue later in the month at the Westside Artwalk and finish at a Closing Gala on May 13.  Over on the lower eastside, UWM’s Kenilworth Building hosted an “Open Spaces” event featuring performing arts work by BFA students, a dance preview of Stone Soup, and a special interactive sculpture installation from Samuel Williams.

We sent our intrepid Spring photo interns Nicole Peaslee and Nickolas Nikolic out into the pouring rain on both dates to try and capture some of the ambiance and energy of this artistic weekend.  Below are two slide show results or you can follow our flickr account here.

Kenilworth Open Spaces: