Road Trip
... to Mineral Point, WI.

Dropped off some work for a show ("Artists' Ornaments and Other Small Works") at Green Lantern that opens this Friday, Dec. 2, 5-9 as part of the monthly gallery walk the town sponsors.



This town is oddly similar to where I showed work last year, in Makanda, IL, not just because it's hilly:




The little giftee shops are pretty interesting and mostly schlock-free. A lot of them are artist's studios and/or homes with a room up front for selling stuff. I particularly like Bruce Howdle's animal vases and pig snout coffee mugs (with or without teeth -- he'll sell them to you either way):




I loved the glass aquarium stuff at Sirius Glass Studio:



The guy (Chuck Pound) also does handmade marbles.

The odd thing about the place is this: no chain stores. There's even an actual drug store:



Some places looked interesting (could see what looked like silkscreen prints thru the window here, but the store wasn't open):



The architecture is really interesting -- it's an old lead and zinc mining town, settled by Cornish miners, apparently, so has a genuinely not-twee olde world working class feel to it.

But a lot of stores are vacant. The summer months are probably better for business. Once the snow hits, I wouldn't want to try to get up and down these streets.
- posted by Cynthia @ 10:41 AM | | | Link |