Hot Springs Gallery Walk will celebrate its 35th Anniversary in August 2, 2024.
By David Rose
Artists are the shock troops of urban renaissance. They move into marginal urban areas, establish a beachhead, and make it safe for Starbucks. But long before the likes of Starbucks are willing to take a chance, galleries move in on the heels of the artists. Galleries need cheap space and these marginal urban areas, if nothing else, have cheap space.
Galleries are not deterred by the higher crime rates. Nobody steals art. In the 1970s and 80s I lived in Little Rock’s Quapaw Quarter, the largest collection of historic homes in the state. The city had written the Quarter off as a loss. One well-meaning group was trying to move the Governor’s mansion out to the west while another was trying to do the same with the Art Center.
My house was broken into half a dozen times. Once they took a burned-out toaster oven, half a tube of toothpaste, and a 5-gallon bucket of spackle. None of my art was ever taken. I don’t know what the street value of spackle is but apparently it is worth more than art.
When I first came to Hot Springs 25 years ago there were more galleries on Central Avenue than there were in Dallas or Memphis. The Spa City was the place for artists to show, not only for Arkansas but for the surrounding states as well. The Santa Fe of the mid-south.
Today many of those galleries are gone. The covid quarantine was a setback but the spirit of Gallery Walk lives on. It is, in fact, making a comeback with a row of related businesses joining in the fun. Join the Artists’ Workshop Gallery along with the other galleries on the first Friday of this and every month.
As an artist, David Rose won both the Arkansas Governor’s Award and the Delta Award. His works are in the collections of Tim Robbins, Bruce Springsteen, & Susan Sarandon. As a writer, he flunked every English class he ever sat in. Born in Woodstock, NY, he is very much a product of the 1960s and never really managed to escape that fabled decade. Visit Rose at www.amazon.com/David Malcolm Rose.
