An entire Year (Almost) later

I haven't felt like writing about the Rochester art scene this year. Instead, I've been licking my wounds, feeling old and forgotten and ....all those feelings that get exactly no sympathy and no attention and therefore, I guess it's time to abandon that direction and look for some new strategy to (1) use my brain (2) use my experience and (3) use my time - but leave my $$$ out of it!

First, dear readers, as for one of my last blogs, I was dis-invited to participate at MAG on the Women's Council panel discussing art in the 21st century. Unfortunately, nobody remembered to tell me about the change of plans until the week before when I telephoned the program chairwoman to ask what time to show up and ... well, you can guess the embarrassing conversation from there. The panel, instead, was Ron Netsky (from Nazareth), Rebecca Rafferty (grad. of Nazareth and current art critic for City Newspaper. I wonder how that happened?) and Bleu Cease, director of RoCo. What goes on here? I feel a bit like a leper but I do remember getting Bleu Cease thoroughly angry about a slap-in-the-face review I wrote for City (before I was invited to leave there too!) And I did continue to tweek the nose of MAG (out of love! I keep wanting more, better, the best and keep getting mediocre, convenient, easy listening art.). Perhaps I went about it the wrong way and should not have done my criticism in a public forum. Oh well...water over the bridge (along with my news career!)

So where are we now? It seems to me that RoCo made some good decisions this year (the 6 X 6 show became not only a hugely successful fund raiser but equally good community builder. So why is this - the 2nd year - the last for this event ? Ask Bleu.)

MAG has a glass show up that needs some seriously thoughtful analysis but I'm not doing that now. Time is getting short and I need to take my puppies to puppy school. Instead, I'll send out this question: What's going on with this flap about ArtWalk? I need to be brought up to speed from people who know. Will you help? Can I? Shirley