A Good Time Was Had By All: The Secret Unveiling of Suburban Flatfiles or Suburban Flatfile Exchange. Still noodling with the title.

I could have at least pretended to stop monster truck dog from pulling the cracker heist, but I was too busy taking pictures.

I had my first unofficial guest this weekend when Carla Knopp came into town. Carla hails from Indiana, specifically, Indianapolis, or even more specifically, Rocktown. We've been following each other's blogs and painting for a bit. One of the great advantages of Nashville is that it's rather centrally located, assuming you could fudge the west coast east a few inches.

Lots of art conversation and general camaraderie happened around the kitchen table and by 8 or 9 pm, we realized we should head out to openings. It was also the weekend of Nashville's Downtown Art Crawl. We made it to The Rymer Gallery, Tinney Contemporary and Twist before closing time. I should go back for a closer look at the paintings since I spent more time chatting with a couple of folks and gawking at the surroundings in my new old hometown. (Prior to Carla's arrival, I stopped in Zeitgeist and also attended an artist talk at Cumberland Gallery in conjunction with First Thursdays, so I feel like I've made headway on re-familiarizing myself with the art scene here.) I got lost in the massive 2-block area of downtown between where I parked the car and the galleries, so we wound up in Printer's Alley-and because it was a touristy thing to do, we mugged for photos.

I posed with a tourist who jumped into our already cheesy photo shoot. When we finally made it back to the car, I had a ticket because I forgot to put coins in the lot. Central/Allright Parking is located in Newport Beach, California. Nothing Central or Allright about that. 

The next day we continued our conversation and before leaving I showed Carla The Pool.

The sun was in my eyes. 

Eventually I will have to either fill in the pool or call it a pond. Meanwhile I throw in Mosquito Dunks. It is also the primary residence to a bullfrog, and what I make out to be either a turtle or a snake. They seem to keep an eye on the insect population. 

I've been toying with the idea of running a micro-residency/flatfile gallery here at the homestead. There's not enough room yet for a full-on second studio, the space is more conducive to being a bed and breakfast for artists who want a change of scenery, so perhaps just calling it a weekend flatfile exchange would be a good start. I'm open to ideas.