art_detour_weekend_03 birdmad Every march. my favorite weekend of the year. a large number of the downtown galleries and artist workspaces and studios open to the public for a big walking tour evrything from the abstract to the real, from the brilliant to the somewhat banal this year was the fifteenth annual, i have been to all but about four or five of them in that time. one year, they included a special exhibition where anyone who fancied themselves as an artist and had a complete work ready for display could submit and be seen by the public during the detour... i had just completed a piece and decided to submit it. It didn't get much notice from the jury, but the viewers seemed to react to it... sad to say it fell victim to the burglary that claimed a lot of my stuff a few ears back...oh well The only drawback of late is that the rush to redevelop downtown Phoenix chased a lot of the art venues from the center of the city to places on the fringe of downtown... so i would guess that in walking the routes from the outside to the middle, i walked about a good 10 miles or so this afternoon, the first hot day of the year. Next year i will have to make sure i come up with some way to go both days, i missed just over a third of this years exhibits and the sunday hours were a little light to try and get it all in If you're ever through here in this place that sometimes pulls double-duty as hell's auxilliary overflow space around he first weekend in March, come on down, check it out 030309 ... She in Mesa I've never heard of it, Birdman. Is it unpublicized? 030310 ... birdmad no, actually, it gets some press, but not a lot...more "under-publicized" than anything else there's a slightly smaller version the organizers do in the evenings on the first friday of every month.. The New_times can generally be trusted to give it a few paragraphes in advance 030310 what's it to you? who go blather from