Two weekends ago, my wife and I wrapped our two-year-old daughter Savannah in a Winnie the Pooh raincoat and hit the pavement for the Annual Fall Gallery Walk. Our challenge: to see how long we can entertain Savannah while not allowing her to deface any art work or become a performance piece herself. Because of these constraints, her taste ends up dictating ours; the more she likes something, the longer we are allowed to remain and look. She is our guiding critic. We were pleasantly surprised by what Savannah ended up liking. Maybe all of the museum visits are rubbing off on her.

The critic at work (Savannah in the rain) Photo: Teresa Rafidi

We started our expedition at Craighead-Green Gallery with Shawn Smith’s Lego-rific pixilated plywood sculptures. The playfulness of idea and material translate even to a two-year-old. She remained here happily for over 45 minutes (amazing) while we waited on friends and visited with the artist. While I found Shawn’s discussion of our evolution from an analog world to a digital one and the social implications fascinating, the concept was unnecessary for Savannah. She was won over by the prominent use of the color red – her favorite – in several of the fire pieces.

Her experience at the Howard Sherman show at Pan American, however, was not as pleasant. She lasted about ten minutes – if that long – before demanding to leave, preferring to stand in the rain. While there are many things that I enjoyed about Sherman’s work as far as color and surface, I was not permitted a deeper inspection and will have to return sans Savannah.

At this point, for Savannah’s sake as well as our own, it is time to edit our trip. If we can only attempt two more galleries without Savannah completely melting down, which do we choose? Well, we wanted to see the results of Marty Walker’s great slim down, and I remember liking Sarah William’s paintings from the summer show. She is a recent University of North Texas grad and is displaying remarkable talent and painting maturity right out of grad school. The soft glowing greens and reds paired with luscious Baroque darks did not impress Savannah, though. Again, my time inside was brief. The large crowd in such a tight space was too much for her, and I only had a quick walk through before allowing her to splash in puddles outside and repeatedly climb the entrance stairway. I’m disappointed by the new, even smaller space that Marty Walker now has to work with, but it is better that she have a small space rather than no space at all.

Sarah Williams, Marcelione Trailers, 2008, oil on panel, 24 x 24 inches Photo: Courtesy Marty Walker Gallery

From there we headed to Conduit. I had previewed this show Friday night and had hopes that Savannah would find Jill Foley’s installation as fascinating and fun as I did. At this point in the evening Savannah is pretty much done, her pants are soaked from splashing in water, she’s hungry and it’s getting close to bedtime. Yet upon walking into “The Mountain,” Savannah found a second wind. There were so many things for her to explore and at last she didn’t have to remain at a respectable distance from the art. Savannah described it as “neat”. She also kept returning to the “pet” in the cardboard box by the desk, the one in dire need of a dental attention. She was intrigued by the attached teeth and kept asking “what’s that?” Lacking a true explanation, all I could tell her was that it was a little monster, which only aroused her curiosity more. She also wanted to climb on the smaller mountain structure of cardboard that lies in front of the primary installation – the one that looks remarkably like a playground climbing apparatus. She became frustrated when prohibited from conquering it. At which point we realized it was time to get her home, dry her off, warm her up, and put her to bed.

I was proud of my daughter for being patient with us while we looked at art and schmoozed with friends. She was a real trooper and seemed to enjoy many parts of the evening. I was also proud of our galleries. They worked to dispel a few myths about themselves. One myth: that they do not support young, unproven local artists. Marty Walker and Conduit both exhibited fresh MFA grads from our local programs. Sarah Williams from UNT and Jill Foley recently completed her degree at Southern Methodist University. This was a great opportunity for them to shine and showcase the talent that lies in the Metroplex. Now if we can only find a way to keep them from going to New York. I was also very impressed by the Conduit Gallery for showing such an ambitious site-specific installation. It was challenging work for a commercial gallery to exhibit and something rarely seen down here outside of the non-profit spaces, especially by an artist currently without national recognition. This was great to see and renews some faith for me in our local galleries. Let’s just hope they can keep it up.