This Saturday Weavings, INK will have their last event before closing the gallery. Hopefully those who have supported the gallery in the past will take this opportunity to come and celebrate this ending of a creative site in Wrightsville. There will be food and drink and some special sales on items in the gallery for last minute shopping. Maybe this event will bring in new and curious patrons who will experience this unique gallery for the first time. Over the years that is what we tried to achieve with coming up with special events to bring new people in and bring old friends back to the gallery.
An Inkmen show at Halloween provided the backdrop for a Horror Show Giveaway Event complete with Trick or Treat Bags full of Art and candy. The next and most successful event was the End of the World Party for the Mayan Apocalypse in 2012. I had been selling a poster of a hex sign guaranteed against extinction protection and Robert and Phyllis gave me the go ahead to organize a End of the World Party complete with a mix CD of end of the world songs. It even made the front page above the fold in the York Dispatch newspaper. After that holiday event, we came up with a Winter Solstice Celebration in 2013 and a Sequential Saturday Event in 2014 where we handed out unique Christmas Stockings to the first lucky 12 patrons who attended the party.
I was allowed to create two Halloween events utilizing the Barn behind the gallery which had been cleaned up recently. The first event, in 2014, was entitled “The Strange Renderings of Lee Robllis”. This unnerving display of large drawings of malformed hybrid creatures told the story of a troubled butcher’s apprentice who accidently butchered a supernatural shape shifting creature and thereby became cursed himself. The Barn became alive with the otherworldly echoes of the cries of animals slaughtered in this abandoned abattoir. It was a great time for me to stretch my imagination in areas I could never have dreamt of, creating a whole space to play in.
This year at Halloween, I went back to the barn and discovered an infestation of Octoberflies, Guests were invited to help get rid of the flies by taking one out of the barn. Some brave souls allowed themselves to be turned into a fly as well while in the Barn. Another enjoyable exercise in imagination and play was had by all who attended. So thankful for the opportunities that Robert Oughton and Phyllis Koster gave me that allowed me to display my imagination to others. Helping to create these special events at Weavings, INK were some of the best creative times for me there.
