This last Friday (Nov. 6) about 16 of us from COAST, including our Profs- Ward, Sned, and Goehner road-tripped it up to KC, MO for a great day full of art, fun, and inspiration. Every First Friday of the month the downtown Crossroads area of KC opens its galleries, studios, and restaurants for the throngs of people that come through to experience the creativity, sights, sounds, flavors, and company of other new people.
For a few years now COAST has made this treck in December, just in time for the Christmas lights, but this year we chose November, and it was amazing. For one, God blessed us with a perfectly gorgeous Fall day, and even into the night it never got cold...perfect street strolling. We even had a few street performers out, including fire-twirlers, dancers, and a walking art exhibit that came to you!
There was a ton of great art, too, of course. We saw some fun robots with personality, by these guys, some interesting (and incredibly expensive) ceramic sculpture, beautiful paintings, and photography, and then some great print work by students and also by the pros at Hammerpress.
Apart from the local art scene we also got to visit some real art museums earlier in the day which I particularly enjoyed. The Nelson-Atkins (a free museum) had amazing an amazing historical art collection including Egyptian, Native American, Chinese, and lots of art that several of us had just finished studying in our text books in Mr. Peer's Art History class. So that was particularly exciting to see whole rooms dedicated to chapters we just went through in our book, and be able to recognize painter's and sculptor's names and styles before even reading the placards!
Oh, and I almost forgot- there was even a little bit of shopping and dining in the beautiful Country Club Plaza. For those of us that miss the better options of big cities, we visited the Apple store and Urban Outfitters, among other favorites.
We had a great time and are definitely looking forward to it again next year. If you went with us, feel free to send me some of your photos to add, and if you didn't...we hope you'll join us at next year's Art Walk. Remember stuff like this is Free for COAST members (along with those cool t-shirts), so ask Emily Olson or any of us about joining any time!
-K :) (photos courtesy Emily Caneday)
