I just got in from the February 2009 First Saturday Art Crawl. Now that I’ve fed my 6-and-a-half week-old daughter and put her to bed, I have some thoughts I want to jot down.

If you’re not familiar with the First Saturday Art Crawl, it’s a monthly event where a bunch of art galleries (mostly in the Arcade on 5th Avenue) in Nashville open up simultaneously and people go gallery-hopping. It’s almost like a big traveling party full of artists and art fans. It’s similar to an Untitled show, but it’s way, way bigger, and the quality is generally a lot better since it consists of more “signed” artists rather than art students entering their first piece in a show (nothing wrong with that, gotta start somewhere).

It was great getting to see people a few people I know from my days with Plowhaus like Jimi Benedict, Samantha Callahan and Eric Denton. I also ran into Erika Johnson, too. At TAL/Plowhaus (I didn’t realize Plowhaus was in the upstairs of the Tennessee Art League now) I ran into Patricia Jordan, for whom I am working on a new website at the moment. So that was fun running into people I know.

The art was generally OK, not a lot that really stuck with me. However, I’ll say my two favorite galleries out of the entire night were Estel Gallery and Rymer Gallery. Both spaces look fantastic, but the art in particular was just superior to everything else I saw tonight. The work at Estel had an undercurrent of humor (or tragedy, depending on which pieces you were looking at and how you looked at them) with the “Rock Paper Scissors” theme. On the wall surrounding Daniel Lai’s piece “Ants and Rocks” were painted little ants just like the ones in the painting. I was amused by the note by the painting which said something to the effect of “Wall ants not included.”

Also at Estel, Harry Underwood’s new paintings were really nice, with his signature garish greens and brick reds painted on wood with meticulous (and very well-done) script lettering (I wonder if he did calligraphy or typography in a past life?) along his cadre of 1950s stock people and ironic titles. (I got a chuckle out of the “Nashville Ocean” on the painting “Little Campfire Orchestra.”) At first it seemed like more of his usual work, but there was something more mature and thoughtful about this series that impressed me. It seemed like there were more hidden meanings and a somewhat more ominous tone, especially with the explosions/fires in the distance behind the scenes he had set. For some reason it reminded me of the L.A. fires and the line from the Doors song “L.A. Woman”: “I see your hair is burning / the hills they are on fire.” (I was also impressed that Harry remembered my name. I don’t think I’ve talked to him face-to-face in a couple of years. I’m pretty bad at remembering names so I suppose that impresses me when others can do it.)

Rymer Gallery had a pretty eclectic mix of artists and styles, and while I’d like to see them narrow their selection down a bit, I was pretty impressed with what they had. Of course, the biggest buzz was around Herb Williams, who did a piece of Barack Obama in crayons. Yup, cut-up crayons assembled to create a relief image of Obama. (Can’t say President because it was done before he took office.) I was pretty impressed with the colors and handling of paint in the pieces by Julia Martin, and of course I was drawn to the architecture in the pieces by Antoine Claes.

I have to say I wasn’t all that impressed by what I saw in the Arcade, which made up probably 80% of what I saw tonight. Maybe I would’ve enjoyed the art more if the galleries hadn’t been so crowded. But the weather was nice today so I guess everyone felt like going out and downtown.

So while the quality of the work I saw was “okay” overall, I wish I saw more stuff that got me all inspired to go into the studio and crank out some good stuff. I suppose it did in a way: hopefully I can create some pieces that will help raise the bar. I know that sounds a little arrogant, but it motivates me in some weird way. I would like to see the level raised a bit here in Nashville. I don’t have plans to enter every Untitled show this year like I did last year, but I do want to focus on doing a lot more art in 2009.

Then maybe this time next year I can have some stuff hanging in one of the galleries in the art crawl.