I had a very neat evening. The town has First Friday Gallery Hop, where you can meet at this restaurant, pay $5 for a trolley ride to various art galleries all over that are open late.
But there's one area of town by the colleges that's the funky artsy part and there's a Art Park (with galleries and studios) [link] where everything stays open and there are bands scheduled, a drumming circle, and various other things going on. This is the first time I went. I was a bit freaked because I haven't been there before and I got a bad case of panic "omigod everyone will think I'm a loser poser freak" but there were tons of different people there.
I walked around and looked at everything. One gallery had these cool pins made from Wonder Woman comicbook panels, which I liked but didn't buy. Others had paintings, sculpture, mixed media. There's a yarn store that I went into and sat and talked to the ladies. One woman just won a National Pattern Contest for her Flamey socks. They sounded cool, the contest was through Cherry Hill or Cherry Tree or something.
I bought myself two birthday presents. One is a pin, that's shaped like a shield (but open), with an amythest and a sword that goes through it and is the pin part. It's based on a Scottish design. I got into a conversation with the guy who made it and he was talking about Vermont and I sort of mentioned Teppy's brother's 666 beer, which he was really interested in and he wanted info about the restaurant and also if the beer would be available, etc. I have to go back and read what Tep posted.
After walking around some more and looking at stuff I bought a painting. This is the first ever piece of original painting I've bought, and it's really cool. It's an exploding robot. I'm very tired otherwise I could describe it better, but I just couldn't stop looking at it. But it's painted on paper instead of stretched canvas, there was one smaller painting I adored, but I couldn't afford it and I love the robot so I got it. He just had it tacked to the wall of the studio so I'm going to tack it to my wall until I can figure out about getting it framed.
I'll take a picture and post it tomorrow. Both of the pin and the painting.