ArtWalk Longview April

It was an absolutely stunningly beautiful day for a downtown event, and despite the city of Longview having a boil notice for the water supply, Arts Longview’s ArtWalk April went forward. It was supposed to be the biggest yet, but I’ve been to three, maybe four and never could find parking unless I’d go to the end of West Tyler Street all the way to North First Street (the last one I had to park in front of Longview News-Journal when I came an hour early), but was able to park in front of Oil Horse Brewing Co. for this ArtWalk, despite being an hour late, but then maybe that’s the secret.

The mood seemed fairly tense in comparison with others I’ve attended. People seemed to do less meandering and appeared to be more determined to go from point a to point b. A few of the people I actually got to talk with about how things were going, mirrored that in sales and interactions unfortunately.

There were plenty of artists, live music, and vendors. But we ended up leaving after only an hour and a half so hopefully it ended up turning around for everyone.

Took The Child to the Longview Museum of Fine Arts, and she spent the entire time being a shutterbug with my backup camera and seemed to have a blast just taking photos of everything. She repeatedly asked what rules to photography there are, and did not (not one bit) like my answer of “none”.

Watching her take photos and helping her with the occasional thing was the highlight of ArtWalk April for me. I did really enjoy seeing Lakey being highlighted (Lakey’s boards and art were prominent in the promotion of this event, I had one moment in Ollie’s Skate Shop where I mentioned him by name and two people in the back raised their drinks and shouted “LAKEY!”, and on several occasions people were talking about how the sidewalk was too pretty to walk on), and the handful of artists I talked with were absolutely thrilled to talk about their process and work!

All that said, I am absolutely looking forward to the next ArtWalk Longview event, hopefully the mood will be lighter and the technical SNAFU’s wont dampen anything.