A walk into Cache Valley art during arts festival
It’s a picture you might expect from the posh, cultured world written of by Fitzgerald or Hemingway.
Sunset’s lights creeping through the gallery windows as an old man sits in the corner playing a mandolin. People, some couples, some families, and some still single, passing in and out. The paintings are hung tastefully around and (speaking of taste) a table of food lies in reach. All in Cache Valley.
“There’s a lot of art in Cache Valley, and very few people realize that,” said Chad Wright, the gallery director of the Alliance for the Varied Arts (AVA). “The purpose of the gallery walk is to bring downtown [Logan] alive, expose the local community to art, and let them know what’s available to them.”
Wright, originally a resident of the Salt Lake valley, organized the first gallery walk in September of 2001. It included most of the art galleries in downtown Logan. At Friday night’s walk, 14 local galleries and businesses participated, including the AVA, the Book Table, Caffe Ibis, S.E. Needham Jewelers and The Sportsman.
Gene Needham, a lifelong resident of Cache Valley, owns several shops that participated in the walk, including The Art Shoppe and S.E. Needham Jewelers. Needham is also one of the artists who was featured in the walk.
“I think we all put ideas together,” Needham said of his art. “It all depends on how we feel. Ideas come and go, sometimes you get a good idea and then you forget about it, but then you remember it at the end.
“I like to paint landscapes and portraits,” he said. “Most of the portraits are of my family.”
Friday night’s walk was special for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the artistic treat brought all the way from Tibet. On the second floor of the Cache Valley Center for the Varied Arts, five monks in traditional Tibetan garb stood stooping over a table painfully, meticulously placing colored pieces of crushed granite to create a traditional Mandala painting. Symmetrically perfect and packed with brilliant colors, these paintings take somewhere between 25 and 35 hours to complete.
The evening’s art was as varied as the people who came to view it.
“We expect around three to four hundred people tonight,” Wright said.
Several families and students from Utah State University were seen pounding the pavement, and they all came for different reasons.
Kristen Stevenson, an undeclared freshman, said she was here mostly for the extra credit (offered in Tom Peterson’s creative arts course), but added that she “really likes art.”
“It’s very interesting with all the different varieties of art. I really didn’t know they had this sort of thing in Cache Valley,” she said.
Stevenson said she hoped to see “some cool paintings, see what other people have done and maybe go home and try and do my own art or something.”
Kajsa Gardner, a junior majoring in interior design, said she went mainly for the extra credit, but decided it was really more for the art.
“The gallery walk was awesome,” Gardner said. “My favorite part of the gallery walk was just seeing all the art and all the paintings done by different artists.”
Wright said, “The arts are an amazing part of everyday life, and especially for the student community. They should realize what opportunities there are here. Cache Valley really is rich in the arts.”
As the sun sets, drums play a funeral march in front of that corner shop and evening vespers comes to a close. Each person it seems has somewhere else to go, but for a moment, they were touched. And when next the walk commences, they are sure to be there again, eagerly searching for the wealth each work of art contains.
If any students wish to get their work in the AVA gallery, they can go down to the gallery and get a proposal. Next year is already booked solid, but there’s always 2005.
-mattgo@cc.usu.edu