Elsewhens and Otherwheres

Tea: Caramel Lapsang

Music: The W's, "The Devil is Bad"

Time: Night.

I like all sorts of visual art -- painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, fiber art, metalwork, you name it.

Within each medium, I like a lot of different styles -- from the hyper-realist to the utterly abstract.

But there is something about art that evokes a sense of familiar place -- and right now, in this moment (and knowing it could change tomorrow), that's what sticks with me most from the First Friday outing of two nights ago.

I'll go in reverse chronological order here. We'll begin at a later stop: Barkley (formerly the TWA headquarters), which hosted an opening for Harriet Bigham. She lives in the Crown Center area, and much of her work reflects that. I worked in that part of the city for a decade, and still find myself there at times. So in her paintings, I see places I've not merely passed by, but bonded with in some way. And somewhere inside, I'm there again.

Now we backtrack to Unit 5 Gallery, which is now featuring paintings by Richard Mattson. There's a good deal of work featuring the Flint Hills, which is well-traveled territory for me and mine -- and a lot depicting the Brookside/South Plaza area.

That includes Loose Park, a place dear to me for a number of reasons. One is a stand of evergreens, on the west side of the park (near the Narnia Lamppost, about which I'll write more later). I have been there in each season of the year, and each time I step under those trees I feel as though I'm in a sanctuary. (Snow heightens the effect, but nothing diminishes it.)

One of Mattson's paintings is of those trees. So, of course, that was the one I kept coming back to.

I'm a "try new things" person, sometimes to a fault. But at the same time, it can be good to go back to touchstone places -- even when they're hanging on a wall in 2-D.