By JAMES BELL
Hays Post
This Friday, area residents will once again converge in downtown Hays for the 37th annual Hays Arts Council Fall Art Walk.
Among the many businesses and organizations participating, the event will feature painted works, sculpture, photography music and food — with core hours scheduled from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m.
“It's going to be awesome,” said Hays Arts Council Executive Director Brenda Meder. “I think we've got 19 locations on the walk, and some of them have really large, major features. And some of them have smaller, more intimate features.”
Along with the variety of visual work on display, the Hays Symphony Orchestra will also kick off its season with an outdoor concert in the downtown pavilion from 7:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
“Get to the Art Walk early, get stuff done, and then enjoy at least some of the concert,” Meder said. “And then there's still plenty of time when it's done, or halfway through to go do more things.”
A chalk station will also be set up nearby allowing children of all ages to create their own art while the symphony performs.
“There's always just some great art that ends up over there,” Meder said. “And it's fun that people have the opportunity to be creative.”
Along with the symphony, music will be a prominent part of the evening at other locations including the Hays Public Library hosting Matt Detherage, the Paisley Pear Wine Bar and Bistro featuring The Church Ladies (Unsupervised), and Salon 1007 hosting jazz musician Danny Zhang.
“There's really some great things going on in that aspect of the arts as well,” Meder said.
The musical performances complement the typical variety of businesses participating with visual artists.
At the Hays Arts Center, two exhibitions from a recent Kansas transplant will be on display.
“Rodney Wood is a fabulous artist whose work is often described as magical realism or emotional realism,” Meder said. “They're very straightforward and realistic. But there's this mystery, this intrigue. They're sort of this almost like a surreal element in some of it.”
“They are just mesmerizing.”
While Wood has been a longtime resident of Colorado, he is no stranger to the Hays Art Walk, having showcased his art car Spell Bound during the Spring Art Walk last year.
“He's thinking about bringing some of his art cars up as well,” Meder said. “He was the director of the art car museum in Trinidad. Big art car museum, but he's also been with other galleries.”
She said he has been a longtime artist and gallery director and brings part of his large collection to Hays featuring original works along with reproductions of pieces currently held by collectors.
“One of the exhibitions that we'll be having is called Humanimals,” Meder said. “It is this wonderful collection of work, where some of his delightfully extraordinary friends have inspired him to create works that feature creatures from the animal kingdom, but in settings that are very human,”
That will be in the hall, she said, but in the front gallery will be all original paintings.
“They're absolutely fascinating,” Meder said. “And the subject matter is diverse and varied.
“It's a lot of exploration of the human condition and feelings,” she continued. “There's a curiosity, even elements of survival skills, but a lot of enigma and mystery in the course of his paintings. People are going to like this.”
Even though he has only been in Kansas this year, Meder said she wanted to showcase his work as quickly as possible “so we could be the first one in Kansas to exhibit his work and showcase a style of a conceptual approach to the work that we hadn't seen before.”
Along with Humanimals, Wood will also present Windfalls of Passion.
The Arts Center will also stage Intaglio: Below the Surface, that includes prints from Michael Jilg and Phil Epp in the back gallery.
“It's going to look striking back there,” Meder said. “They are both pros at what they do. I couldn't be prouder of the three artists that will be featured at the Arts Council for the Art Walk.”
While the core Art Walk is set from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m., some shows will run different hours to allow for distance outside of the core of downtown, including two exhibitions on the Fort Hays State University campus.
“And then I also want to let people know that on Saturday, there are a number of the locations that are open anyway, on Saturdays, they will still have their art features up,” Meder said. “So, if you can't get out Friday night, or you want to go back and see something again, we will have hours for that.”
