Usually items in the window of Roger Weinreich's store belong to other people. He runs Good Fortune on Keene's Main Street, a consignment store selling furniture and other items.
But this week, Weinreich's own artwork will grace the windows as part of Art Walk - an explosion of art in downtown Keene. And paintings by Edward Gordon - instead of the more common prints - will also be among works by more than 50 artists on display from tonight through May 22.
To make Art Walk a success, businesses in Keene lend their display space to artists chosen by the Grand Monadnock Arts Council. Considering that Keene has only a few art galleries - and a few other public places that display art - the triumph of this event is that it makes artwork accessible, 24-hours a day, to anyone who wants to check out Main Street store windows.
And some artists, including Weinreich, will go public themselves, working on the street and talking with passers-by. Large crowds of school children will be moving around Main Street this week, checking out the art.
This is Weinreich's first year in Art Walk; he heard about it a couple of years ago. "So I noticed it, which is the success of it," he says. "What catches people is the visual transformation of downtown into an art gallery."
For Weinreich, who helped his artist mother as a small child, art "allows me to see aspects of myself." My art is a real place of expression that provides a visual and concrete form to ideas and things that are intangible," he ways. He hopes by participating in Art Walk, he can get people to connect with him and his work. "So often, the artist is excluded from the society visually so I love the idea of working on the street with the children."
"Anyone and everyone is an artist," he says. "That means you avail yourself of the opportunity to create in your life." Although Weinreich has shown in Boston and is in private collections in the United States, Canada and France, it's the first time that his sculptures - mostly in wood with some conceptual pieces in plastic - will be on display locally.
"I haven't shown work in the area yet," he says. "And I thought it was time I brought my work to town. I think it's a great event." That feeling is echoed by painter
Edward Gordon of Alstead, whose works will hang in the windows at Creative Encounters.
"I think it's a wonderful idea because a lot of people are intimidated by galleries for some reason. They won't go in," Gordon says.
An event such as Art Walk not only exposes the public to art, it also gives artists a chance to come out. "I desperately want to show my work locally," says Gordon, whose paintings are full of meticulous detail.
Gordon followed his lifelong interest in art and abandoned his career as a certified public accountant. Looking at art in galleries, he thought he could do better than what he saw, that he could make paintings that people want to see. But he tempered his enthusiasm with practicality.
"I recognized early on that it's difficult to make a living as an artist," says Gordon, who has a publisher and distributor to help sell prints of his paintings nationwide.
Painting professionally since 1980, he has developed an original technique using alkyd paints. He has exhibited in New York City at Grand Central Galleries, the National Art Club, the Salmagundi Art Club, the Lotus Club and the Lever House. The paintings show more detail than the prints, Gordon says. "I don't do too many paintings because they take me so long." So Gordon prints are more common than the original paintings.
"I want to do all I can to show my work locally," says Gordon, who also has a show opening in June at the Thorne-Sagendorph Art Gallery at Keene State College.
He has had to borrow back some paintings for that show, he said, but he's eager to have his work exposed to the public, no matter where or how. "If you went to a rest stop on the interstate and Mozart was playing, would it cheapen Mozart?" he asks. "I would put my art on McDonald's cups."
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