More Art on the Town Fun

With the busy summer I had, I never had a chance to get to Art on the Town in Appleton until the last one -- PARKing on the Town. PARKing on the Town allows artists to set up shop to work or display their work in parking spots on College Avenue. I met Danielle downtown for some much needed fun.

Last year, we had so much fun at PARKing on the Town -- we made buttons and flowers, fished, collected art supplies, and wrote out of bucket list adventure. I was expecting more of the same and was seriously disappointed. 

After saving Danielle from "the terrible band", we start our way down the Ave. We passed someone selling jewelry but didn't stop to browse to do to lack of funds. A few spots down the Ave we stopped to chat with a nice potter for a bit. I would have loved to try throwing a pot. 

There wasn't much between the potter and the end of the Ave except for a roving musician or two. Heading back up the Ave, we saw a few more musicians. I get that Art on the Town features all sorts of art forms but I wanted to make things. I wanted to leave my mark. I really didn't see any place to do that. Even where we wrote out our bucket list last year was featuring music this year. 

We walked up a little farther so I could out a few statues. I love public art statues. They are fun and make fun pictures.

However, as we headed back to Houdini plaza, I found the lone place that allowed us to create some artwork for free. One of the board painting places was offering free board painting. You got a 9x13 inch board to paint that was already stained and whitewashed. By the time we got there, there was 1 black board and several blueish-gray boards left. Danielle snatched up the black board and I got a blueish-gray one. Most of the stencils were the same either something about Love or Family. Danielle scored a fun stencil. I really wanted the home sweet home one but they were out of that one.

 

Being a board painting pro, I didn't bother waiting for the instructors. I instructed Danielle what to do and how to peel off her stencil. We had fun time painting our boards. I am not quite sure I went with the right color combo but it still looks good. 

Painting boards was the highlight of PARKing on the Town... those and the random ballerinas. I'm glad parking was free after 6 in Appleton but it would have been a waste of good change otherwise. We only spent an hour downtown because there wasn't anything to keep our interest. Hopefully next year it will be better and maybe I will be able to go to more Art on the Town events too. 

Dots, Buttons, and Paper Flowers

Last Friday, I texted Danielle asking her if she wanted to do dinner after we picked up our race packets. She said there was that food truck rally thing we were both interested – another Facebook find. When she said that, I remembered that the food trucks were going to be at Art on the Town. The theme was PARK(ing) Day and it sounded like artists would create “parks” in the parking spaces but it would be cancelled if the weather didn’t cooperate. Strathmore Artist Papers would also be giving away bags of free art supplies. We decided to check it out.

Art on the Town is supposed to run 6-9 and for some reason I thought it started earlier so we were perplexed until someone mentioned it to us. In the meantime, we wandered through a few stores and had dinner from Mr. Tacos. It definitely wasn’t street food as we both wished we had forks. My tacos were so messy I couldn’t pick up the second one.

One of the first things we did during Art of the Town was so appropriate for me. We wrote what we wanted to do before we died on the giant chalkboard. I was torn between saying completing my bucket list or go to NYC.

I ended up saying

Danielle wants to

It was fun to see what other people wanted to do before they died.

Some were serious.

Some were humorous.

Others might be hard to accomplish.

Then we received our free art supply bags. We each got a watercolor paper pad, a watercolor brush, and a tube of water color paint. There were other types of drawing books and markers. Now I just have to figure out what I am going to paint with my tube of blue paint.

As we wandered through downtown, we found a spot to fish. If we caught a fish, we could go into the Traveling Palette and create a dot. The dots would then be put on display outside by the paint cans. We both caught fish (my fish for the year, Danielle’s 2nd) and created our dots.

We went into one shop where we created mini buttons.

As we walked through downtown, we saw people carrying origami flowers. I wanted to make one. We found the origami flowers outside the Trout Museum of Art. They were a part of the museum’s bookmaking exhibit. Now I can’t fold origami to save my life, but I managed to create a half-way decent looking flower. It was way simpler than it looked.

We saw a few artists working on projects either on the street or in a store/bar.

It was funny, we probably only planned on staying for a little bit but spent over 2 hours at Art on the Town. It was really the first time either of us visited any of the stores downtown. If I knew what Art on the Town really was about, I probably would have checked it out sooner. I will definitely be checking out more of them next year.