Last of the Dark Hops: March 2009

Thanks to warm weather and the Arnold Fitness Classic the March Gallery Hops were one of the crowded in memory, especially when it came to traffic and parking. Depending when you touched-down in the Short North, you might have spend a half hour or more in the car trying to legally park. The lights on the arches seemed to hypnotize the crowd. Yet, daylight savings time began that night and by the April Gallery Hop it will only be dark for the last half of the event. Many Short North businesses were either not open or were open for a very strict period ending at 10 o'clock. A run of bad winter weather in the last three months probably caused a number of plans for the March Hop to be cancelled.
The galleries and sidewalks attracted a crowd that was elbow to elbow. (above: Mahan and Rivet Galleries) It seemed to be a crowd that has not been to the High Street openings for months or years. People from the Arnold Fitness Classic were as likely to head north to the OSU Campus or Arena District than the Short North. This meant parking was filling up in all directions. Then the major construction sites in the Short North took away sidewalks.( Oh yeh, there is a crane towering over the North Short North now).
Monkey's Retreat (above) is starting to do great window displays of art at Fifth and High St.
Gallery 772 in the upstairs hallway of the Body Shop has shown some consistently interesting paintings, but it is hard to find out the artists' names. New was a long series of paintings where stripes of paint covered the front pages of the Columbus Dispatch for the few weeks after 9-11-2001.
The Sherrie Gallery was showing porcelain sculpture by Julie Elkins. Her pieces had a cabin with smoke coming out of a chimney found on cliffs or chunks of earth with amazing detail.
Kickstart Coffee and scooter shop (left)had a live guitar player wailing away but with few people occupying the seats and tables. RoyGBiv (right) had a photographer and a painter both using trees in a forest as subject matter.
Waldo's (above left) had a show of small photographs, while Utrecht's Art Supply had a real live artist painting next to their colorful front door. Many musicians played along High Street.
An interesting promotional concept was done by two little known galleries. Zengenius Gallery in the Prescott Alley ( two tiny blocks east of High Street) teamed up with a new Tattoo Shop called Sovereign Collective in the original Mahan Gallery space at 3rd and High St. A few pieces were cut in half with one part at one gallery and half at another. Sovereign Collective (above) had a large art show with a grand opening crowd. One piece (above right) asked people to make a wish and add a rock to a pile of rocks suspended by thin pantyhose over a plate of glass. Eventually the rocks would come crashing down and break the glass.

In terms of closures in the Short North, they seem to be mounting in 2009. East Village bar is closed. Four Winds is an empty space. A jewelry store in the new Dakota condo building has vanished. The Cap has a couple of empty spaces. Other empty storefronts along High Street will be joined by new ones that are being built in the near future. Could more art galleries soon afford the Short North?

Campus High Street Always Changing

North of OSU there is a major streetscape renovation strecthing for blocks of what was once called North Columbus. This streetscape is set to showcase the many ethic and unique restaurants and shops that are found north of campus. It will also include a few arches over the street somewhat like the Short North. At Hudson and High St. was once a small town called North Columbus where the streetcars turned around. A few blocks of century old commercial buildings grace this section.

The Big project is the new Ohio Union, the main student union at The Ohio State University. The old one was a sprawling hulk of a building that was a main reminder that OSU was big even in the pre-Baby Boomer 1950's. The future Ohio Union is another sprawling hulk of a building that seems to remind us that the Urban Infill style is alive and well. It looks like the Easton version of the Ohio Union. A new parking garage (right next to another parking garage) is included in the scheme. The above picture is of the back side facing the South Oval.

The High Street facade has many looks the insides look like it has some fun aspects. There are towers and look-outs, picture windows and brick. The main front door is not easy to find, but lets wait until the construction crew cleans up.


The above picture is just an exaple of the interesting renovations of some of the old classroom buildings with the juxtaposition of old and angled post-modern elements.
Yet, the big news is the end of Larry's Bar at the corner of Woodruff and High Street. Larry's Bar lasted over 80 years owned by three generations of one family. Of course, it wasn't a bar at first because that would put it in the middle of Prohibition. It became a bar in 1934 and had been a bohemian outpost until the end of 2008. Always an intellectual bar, they worked hard to keep the jocks out of the place. But alas, the jocks have taken over and made it into a generic sports bar with picture windows.

February Gallery Hop: icy sidewalks

If you stayed away from the February Short North Gallery Hop you played it safe. Despite the seasonably warm weather, the ice and snow from the previous week had not all disappeared. Sidewalks on High Street had a wide path, but the sidewalks on the side streets were mostly ice. Biashara wrapped a tree in front of their shop with scarfs (above). The crowd stayed away, but plenty of people still assembled in the Short North.Sales abound among the galleries. Galleria Zona Cora Zon (above left) had a Carnival sale of a wide variety of pieces. Lindsay Gallery(above left) had a massive group show from his back room full of works from past exhibitors, some haven' t been seen in years. It is a great place to get your folk art fix.
The sales weren't all happy ones. Cameo (above), the glass art gallery that has had the prime spot in the Body Shop building for years is calling it quits. Glass art, perhaps, is losing its luster, especially outside of one man shows. Also on the blocks is Fourwinds home furnishings ( fourwindshome.com ) at 1st Avenue and High. Both shops have prime corner locations selling more of a merchandise product than unique pieces by artists trying to make great art.

Chris Mohler had a show of his heavy metal sculpture and figurative paintings in the Greystone Apartment Building. Mohler has been around over 20 years making a deep portfolio of welded sculpture, sometimes abstract, sometimes recognizable.

Shows of note: Sherrie Gallerie had a show by Christian Faur who has started to make photographic images composed of crayons. That is, he uses thousands of crayons with their tops as pointalist dots of color that form into an image from a distance. Faur also showed other mixed media work.
Rivet Gallery had an erotic photography show called "Darkness into Light" with the likes of such artists as Chas Krider. The show included "Yama", a fetish that incorporated a human skull by Wayne Martin Belger. It was kept in an artistic glass case and was only on view during certain hours. (other showings are scheduled for later in the month).

2009 High Street Construction

2009 begins with High Street in a new construction boom. Even the removal of architecture is a big story like the removal of the skybridge at the City Center (and the planned removal of the City Center itself later this year). The former skybridge connected the mall with the former Lazarus department store and included shops and restrooms of its own. The dark tunnel is gone! High Street has opened up. The old Lazarus building has been converted into an exciting green building and now sports a series of light strips on its south side that flash and change colors. Southern Downtown has the most activity. New parking garages and the new "arched" Main Street Bridge are taking shape. A new County Courthouse (below, top) is going up in the shadow of the 440 foot Courthouse Tower. To explain this you have to understand that Franklin County took down its classic courthouse in the 1960's eventhough new modern office buildings had been built around it for county offices. A new windowless cube of a building was built to house the 12 main common please courts. As the county grew and grew more and more additions were made to the county courthouse campus until the tower was built in 1991. Still, the main courts were stuck in the windowless cube. This new courthouse will replace this building offering more courts in a window clad modernist building with an open, transparent theme.

Also in this southern downtown area is a block of middle income condos by Lifestyle Communities that will put wood construction next to some of our most substantial public buildings.(below, bottom) Considering that the City Center building will bite the dust after only 20 years, one can't rule out that many new downtown buildings are not expected to last much more than 20 years.

People continue to develop the Short North neighborhoods. Above is a house being greatly changed in Italian Village near Prescott Alley.
Above: one of the former Sheet metal shops on Prescott Alley being transformed into pricey lofts.
The biggest Short North project, The Ibizi condos, has not seen any forward progress in a year. The above signage was damaged in a strange way and has now been removed. It really seems to me that the Ibizi isn't the best concept for the heart of the Short North. The design is strange and the idea that we need a lot more condos doesn't seem to jive with today's economy. Unfortunately, the parking garage planned with the Ibizi is much needed and will have to wait as well.
The 25 year spruce-up of the Bollinger Tower is proceeding. This public housing high-rise in the center of the Short North was put in before the gallery hops began. Until the Ibizi is constructed, no other high-rises have invaded the Short North. Of course, 25 years ago the only people calling it the "Short North" were the police and the Short North Tavern. It was known as the Near North then and nobody thought the 12 story Bollinger Tower was out of place. My suggestion: sell the Bollinger to a hotel chain and use the money for newer low-rise public housing elsewhere. The medical offices that grew-up around the Bollinger in 1983 are long gone. This was the site of the New Francis Hotel in the 1970's and before.
Also being renovated: the Olde Time Religion Hall at Lincoln and High St. aka B.J. Snappers, aka 700 Club, aka Major Chords. Looks like another high-end restaurant will grace this space, but one can only hope for some dancing or theater.
Next big controversy: The Garden. Yes, the Garden Church that bought the Garden Burlesque Theater out of protest in the late 1980's has sold the property and moved to the church building on the street behind. The plan for the Garden property is collecting opposition. They want to build a parking garage in back (see above) that will take over the public parking lot next to Magnolia Thunderpussy Records. This garage will have some public spaces, but greatly cut parking for two years as they make the historic theater into a lobby for a mid-rise condo tower.
Speaking of mid-rise condo towers, The Jackson is finally being built (above) just south of the Garden. It only took 12 years of planning during a pretty good economy. How long will the Garden and Ibizi projects take to get off the ground in today's economy?
An exciting condo project is the Smith and High just north of Fifth and High Street in the northern most block of the Short North. The design is really striking. The Smith and High is built onto the front of a strip shopping mall that had a laundry and other shops (inducing a branch of the Public Library at one time). The strip mall will remain in the back (see top photo) while the new condos have these modern glass fronts on High Street. The project also adds new retail on High Street.

The Smith and High are next to the York on High condo project that is transforming the former York Masonic Temple building into condos. Actually, there is a 50's era apartment building in between the two projects (above).

January, 2009 G-Hop: Surprising Good Weather

The January, 2009 gallery hop in the Short North was lightly attended outside of the restaurants, this despite the good (for January) weather. After a week of ice, wind, and freezing rain before Christmas, people didn't plan much for the January 3rd openings.
Infact, some galleries were closed, like Mahan Gallery and Rebecca Ibel Gallery (above). An official dress code seemed to be in effect, namely black clothes, anything black. This could have been the New Yorkers wondering down the street from the Andy Warhol exhibit at the Wexner Center, or maybe reflective of people's attitude about the economy.
Some storefronts, on the other hand, took down their Christmas windows and put up New Years displays. Above is Torso's front window where small TVs stand-in for faces.
Terra Gallery, (above) is a bright spot on the I-670 "Cap" courtyard showing art from many fine artists in their two small storefronts. This month they have some recent painting by Linda Apple, "the" original Short North artist who opened the first studio/gallery in 1977. Her new art seems to be random scenes along High Street.
RoyGBiv, (above) as well as the Ohio Art League were both showing minimalist, installation art. Above, you can see one artist at RoyGBiv covering the front window a a gold colored film. It was almost covered by the end of the hop. 
Kickstart (above) is a coffeeshop that sells scooters and scooter accessories. Its coffee is roasted in Cleveland and has a good taste not familiar to Columbus. They do a variety of events including a DJ during gallery hop. The art on the wall is by employees and hasn't changed for a while, if at all yet (not unlike Cuppy's Coffee's art on its wall). 

  
Other galleries like Rivet (above) continue to do a surprisingly  new show each month. Rivet has focused itself for artist made vinyl and plush toys. These mostly commercially trained artists also do drawings and paintings and have a punk attitude to their art. The Sean Christopher Gallery in the basement of the Greystone Apartments is another small operation that keeps finding great artists and showing them on a budget.

The ice and snow were gone. People were still lining up at Jeni's Ice Cream. The arches were actually doing a mild light show this gallery hop. January is always the most "iffy" of months for the gallery hops, having once been completely cancelled.