“Art After Dark” at the Speed Museum in Louisville was a lively scavenger-hunt of an event. To look at the schedule, broken down into subcategories including music and performance, was to feel inadequately singular. There was just no way to see even most of what was on offer. 
And maybe that was the point. It is far better to have too much than too little at a shindig like this. Nobody would want to actually look at the art… .
Anyway, let’s cut to the high points:
- $27 Artworks donated by locals
- Baloney in clear plastic bags
- Le Petomane Theatre Ensemble with cookies
- Wax Fang in a costumed rockandroll show
So the museum invited local artists to contribute works of art to sell for $27. Cute idea? Sure.
Or was the whole thing just salt in the wounds of artists who’ve long complained that the Speed fails to support local arts, and then exploits them when need be?
Anyway, some artists decided to make a point and instead of donating work they sent in slices of baloney. You get the picture.
So did I. I really loved the paper sign advising visitors to not touch the art. Charming memory.
The Speed was sharp enough to exhibit all the baloney that they got on a couple of walls, and they listed them as for sale just like the rest of the art. 
There were a couple of good pieces of $27 work, but most looked like cheap bad art. I can’t help but think that’s part of the fun. And I have to admire the artists who looked at the whole thing as a commission and spent 10 minutes or whatever and just tossed something together and still had it turn out wonderfully. That’s what I call talent. Not skill, but talent.
Wandering the first floor a bit (searching for a gallery that I forgot was upstairs–and the lack of reminders or maps was odd…) it was hard to miss the large flat-panel displays that were playing flip-films created by crowdsource and provided courtesy of our Louisville Film Society. The group invited anyone interested to borrow a flip-cam from the Speed and capture a short film. Submissions were due Monday and would guarantee 2 free tickets to the event. [I didn't have time, or I would have made one. I'd even planned it all out, though I'll never tell what I planned!]
Some of them were great, but for the small number of screens available, each film should have been limited to 2 or 3 minutes instead of the rambling unedited 10 minutes that many of the films ran, bloating the playlist of each screen into the “maybe I’ll check back later” category. It was fun, though, and interesting to see how volunteers responded to the prompt of “Moving.”
Throughout the evening the theatre troupe Le Petomane perfomed short bits of original work(s?). The piece in the tapestry gallery was a crafty, elevated (literally, on both counts) accounting of the poet Emily Dickinson. Abigail Maupin played the poetess at her most impolitest: riding the shoulders of Tony Dingman and holding forth in a voice muffled–though sweetened–by the cookie she was eating. It seemes like some of the crowd didn’t know what to make of it. Perhaps these folks were confused by the acoustics of the rooms and the fluidity of the ensemble’s “stage” boundaries, but it is, in the audience’s defense perhaps challenging to walk in on some non-traditional theatre already in progress.
The cookies at the end of this one, distributed via dangling red basket, helped smooth things over, though, especially with the kiddies.
Finally, the night ended with a show by glam/jam/indie rockers Wax Fang in the tapestry gallery. They came out in Louis XVI costumes complete with wigs, powdered faces, and livid red glittery lipstick. Again, there was some confusion in the audience as people seemed confused by the relatively conservative sonics of the act’s set.
I compare the experience of listening to the set to that of watching vampire extras from a cheesy movie production who’ve decided to kill time by playing gothic, meandering versions of a band’s best material. All of that, of course, taking place inside a rug factory. And the band members mouths made up to look like they’d feasted on babies swaddled in Fat Elvis’s sequined bellbottoms. It was quite a bit of fun, but strange too on account of the crowd. Nothing like the reported flannel-fest at Zanzibar for the band The Whigs on the same night.
In all, a lively, well-attended fun time at the area’s big art museum. I’m certain they got many new members onto the museum’s rolls and helped remind a lot of the community that Louisville arts aren’t limited to the performing ones. (Though it doesn’t hurt to blend it all up sometimes.)
But the tricky thing with trying to offer something for everyone was that attendees were as likely puzzled by what they accidentally came across as they were pleased by what they were already expecting.