Hootenanny celebrates music and art

On a warm and humid Tuesday evening, an Art Hootenanny at The Venue Fine Art & Gifts brought people together to casually sing, strum instruments and look at art.

The South Grant Street gallery welcomed anybody wanting to take part in the festivities or just socialize. The Art Hootenanny was part of The Venue’s Tuesday demonstration series. Each Tuesday night features a different event.

“It’s kind of two-fold,” said Gabriel Colman, The Venue’s curator and owner. “It’s an opportunity for people to come down on a kind of non-competitive night and see artwork and see something new that they could report on during the week.”

Sarah Flint, a well-known local singer and guitarist, was named song leader of the evening. Musicians sat in an informal circle on the front porch, and participants played in unison and took turns selecting songs.

Most of the tune choices in the random selection were of the folk genre.

“(I enjoy) the informality, the sharing, the interchange,” Flint said. “I learn songs. If I were just here performing I wouldn’t learn any new songs.”

Flint said every time she comes to The Venue, music participants pull out some songs that she is unfamiliar with. From there, she’ll keep her eye out for those songs.

“I kind of try and collect songs everybody knows that bring up memories for people,” Flint said.

As guests walked into the Victorian-style house gallery, leaving the music and heat outside, two rooms featured distinct art exhibits.

In the first room, portraits drawn by Max Hartstein, a musician in the 1950s San Francisco jazz scene, are featured. The portraits depict fellow jazz players in pen and charcoal.

“He’s a three-fold artist,” Colman said. “He does paintings and drawings, he is a fantastic upright bass player and he’s a writer.”

In the next room toward the back of the house was local artist Jeanne McLeish’s show. McLeish does plein air paintings, meaning her works are painted outside on
location.

The work of these two artists will be shown for two weeks. Two new shows will then be installed.

Local, regional and national artists’ works lined the rest of the walls. These pieces included jewelry, bags, pottery, paintings and drawings, among other pieces, and are available for purchase.

Colman calls these his “static collection” because they include art for decor’s sake.

“It’ll be a single piece of an artists’ collection, not necessarily an entire show,” Colman said.

Colman said he chooses art for the gallery based on how the aesthetics of the piece plays in the physical space. He also looks at the level of completeness and whether the artist achieved a goal.

“One of the things that makes the gallery work is the building, the layout, the lighting,” Colman said. “It also has to play well with the rest of the artwork. Beyond that, I can’t look at a piece and go, ‘Personally, I like this, so I should put it on my wall’ — because what I like somebody else might not like.”

Admission was free, and refreshments were served. Artworks were also available for purchase.

Patsy Flint, a Bloomington resident, said she came to the event to see Sarah Flint, her daughter, play. Other than the music, she said she enjoys the artwork featured in this particular gallery.

This event was a way to capture people and bring them inside to look at the art. The event additionally met her personal definition of what a hootenanny is, Patsy Flint said.

“(It’s) just this kind of music — country music,” Patsy Flint said. “Nothing written down, just out of your head come up with whatever seems like fun. It’s a fun thing. So the music is always fun.”

Colman describes the event as an appreciation of music and more so the art of free-form music. More specifically, he explained it as free-form bluegrass.

“(The hootenanny is) something that people could casually join in,” Colman said. “It wasn’t necessarily one person doing a song and then allowing another person to do a song so much as picking songs that multiple people could sit down in.”