04 Dec First Thursday + Nord Alley Party

Compared to previous years, the turnout for this year’s Art Walk was fairly low. Here is a pic of Occidental at around 6:30:

(also, check out the new holiday banners around 1st Ave + in Occidental)

The Nord Alley Party was also happening Thursday night, so we headed over there, and this is the first thing we saw:

It was empty! Todd Vogel, the owner of the space and local alley activist, was worried about the threat of rain and moved the band inside. Once the band and food were inside, and because of the slightly chilly weather, that is also where the people were:

The ‘thing to see’ at this party was the art installation in the alley. Marketed as “2500 bottles. One Message,” 2,500 empty 2L bottles spell out “WASTE NOT.” The historic preservation board prevented them from installing the art into the building exterior, so they improvised. With climbing ropes, they attached the metal sculpture and the bottles to shutter hooks outside of the windows. Here is the result:

Yes, I realize that this picture only says “waste” and no, there is no hidden message here. My good camera ran out of batteries, and the camera I had couldn’t zoom out far enough. Maybe someone else captured it in its entirety. You can see the sketch of it and who was involved in the installation here.

As we left the alley party, Todd pointed out a second installation that I hadn’t noticed. I believe he said it’s inspired by the Northern European Festival of Lights, and was made out of the ends of the 2L bottles. (sorry the picture’s so dark. It was….dark. But you can see the cluster of bottle ends at the very middle of the picture; kind of looks like a large street lamp).

After leaving the alley party, the square had filled out a bit more:

We ran into even more people once we walked over to the Tashiro Kaplan Lofts, where the 30×30 Forgotten Challenge was being held (50 artists who completed 30 works of art in 30 days — all on sale for $40.. should’ve been 30 to go with the theme, but whatever). Although not part of the 30×30 event, here are two pieces of art that I just had to get pictures of.

(A pencil sketch titled “Everyone I know or ever met (that I can remember)”)

And two fantastic pieces that I wish I could afford to buy for our walls (I’m embarrassed that I can’t remember the artist’s name…):