By C.S. Gilbert

Culture Vulture on Art! Key West! and More

 

By C.S. Gilbert

OMG what a workout!

 

Last weekend’s second annual Art! Key West!, much more than its inaugural version, was a marathon of delights.

 

We have to confess that we were able to go to only about half of the events that we really, really wanted to attend. Every single venue we visited shone bright lights on our little city as a very big arts destination indeed. Some are relatively permanent pleasures: gallery shows at The Pottery Factory (notably a festival opener Friday) Gingerbread, South Pointe’s Vintage Posters, Harrison, Stone Soup (the latter presenting a venue for KW Fringe’s short plays, later presented at the CoffeeMill and the Restaurant Store). We truly wanted but failed to get to Audubon House, Lucky Street, Frangipani and Doug Mayberry and Company (the final Fringe performances, plus fine art directed by Michael Phillip).

 

Florida Keys Council of the Arts celebrated the festival Sunday with an afternoon reception launching its annual members show, “It Takes an Island . . .” — a broad range of works by 60 Keys artists. The council show is not juried, thus top professionals such as William Welch are shown among works by talented (and not as talented) semi-pros and amateurs. Also common (happily) is that unjuried shows (I think here of the late, lamented Women’s Show at the Custom House) are often more diverse, richer, more interesting; a good number of excellent works successfully reinterpret the island theme. The show runs through January 31 at the Gato Building.

 

Most fun of all, though, was the Artisan Market surrounding The Restaurant Store 10 a.m. till 2 p.m. Sunday (see photo gallery). It was a veritable kaleidoscope of changing delights for all the senses. Our favorites: craft beers by Bone Island Brewing (“Serving Paradise by the Pint”) and Mozzarella Mike making his fresh cheese. But there were lovely arts and crafts items for sale, Marky Pierson demonstrating mural painting, a truck offering produce (avoid the tomatoes), Key West Chris singing, food and drink for purchase. The best news is that some version of the market will be offered every Sunday. See you there!

 

For us, following Sunday evening’s regularly scheduled jazz at the Gardens Hotel, the grand finale was a preview of “Cock,” the brilliant season opener from Key West Fringe in partnership with The Studios of Key West. Our critic Mark Howell has given it a rave and I agree. In short: see it.

 

One last encore: Kelly’s Muse presented a fine, new (to us) singer/musician, Merry Agape.

 

As more begets more, here comes a note from Sara Mathis, formerly of the Citizen, now editor of The Weekly Paper out of Marathon. “The Weekly is doing a holiday poem contest for our Christmas paper. There are no rules other than the poems should be short-ish and reflect the tropical nature of our climate. There are prizes.” Entries are due by Friday, Dec. 13 to [email protected].

 

Off-topic: a note of correction last week from Carolyn Sullivan; we mistakenly reported that “Nutcracker Key West” would have another BottleCap Friday this year. “I believe there was a misunderstanding . I told (Joyce Stahl) that I might have Dec. 13 open if she wanted to cancel yesterday. . . (but the date was already taken;) however . . . I am going to speak with Joyce about doing one at both Square One and BottleCap next year before the production runs as I truly think it will be much more successful in a production year. I will keep you posted.”

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