Salida Art Walk

While in Colorado, we went to the Salida Art Walk, a big yearly event. We went to Colorado when we did specifically so we could attend this event. Turns out it was the same weekend as the Vermont Quilt Festival. Oh well, I guess I'll go to Vermont next year.

Salida has some of the coolest buildings!

 
Since it's not considered proper to photograph the insides of galleries, I can't show you much about the places my Mom and I visited, but I can show you various photos I took of things I saw in Salida.

Sometimes the most interesting things are not part of the main event. My Mom and I were crossing a side street, and I looked down the street and saw this barn.

Looking down another alley, I saw this building, covered in advertising. This is the kind of thing you have to notice and photograph. Once I saw this building, I kept my eye out for other buildings with painted advertisements on them. I saw many others afterward, but I would have missed them all had this one not caught my attention.

This mountain (with the S for Salida) is where they shoot off the annual Fourth of July fireworks. Many shops had cowboy boots on the counters with a sign asking for donations for the annual fireworks. I should have taken a photo of those too.  (Missed opportunity!)

The very first day we went to Salida, my Mom and I walked into this gallery and I fell in love with one of the small paintings. They were 8 inches square, and only 98USD each. I looked and looked, but left the shop empty handed. It was, after all, the first day and the first shop.

The next morning I texted my pal Julie. "There's a small painting I like that I'd buy if I could find a place to hang it in my house."

"Buy the painting, you'll find a wall," she texted back immediately. So when we got to Salida that morning I made a beeline for the gallery (Bork & Watkins Gallery) and bought the painting. I asked them to keep it for me so I wouldn't have to lug it around all day.

We had great sandwiches at Sweetie's, then kept wandering.

I was really happy and we walked around some more. Then my Mom and I walked into a gallery where the majority of paintings were of majestic horses. The artist, Katie Maher, was working, and my mother and she got to chatting. I wandered around until I saw this:

Oh my goodness, it reminded me so much of my cat Millie. I picked it up from where it was leaning against a wall and brought it over to show my Mom.

This is Millie. You can see how she resembles the cat in the painting.

"Oh Lynne, you have to get this," she said without any prompting whatsoever. I had already had the same thought, so I bought it, and then told Katie the story of how I came to adopt Millie.

We had a great conversation, then went out to visit other shops and galleries. We stopped for ice cream, I bought some earrings, and then decided we'd seen everything and it was time for a rest and dinner.  We walked back to the gallery where I had bought my painting, and this was the first time I got to see it close up.

My painting is by Michael Clark, and I love the "painterly-ness" of it. I love the impressionistic, free movement of the brushstrokes. What had at first appeared to be a house when looked at from a distance suddenly became a barn.

What are the odds?