Springfield Wine and Food Walk
Monday
05.05.08
I currently live in Springfield, Missouri. It’s a growing city of about 170,000 people, most of which are white and republican. Very republican. We claim home to cashew chicken, Brad Pitt, and John Ashcroft (sorry about that one). With this information, you could probably put together an idea of what the Springfield Artwalk would entail. Unfortunately what you’re imagining is probably fairly accurate. In the eyes of others the art hanging on the walls are more of a distraction then a decoration.
I work at Departika. We typically have no food or wine, at least not to hand out to the public. We like to show our art and leave it at that. This leads to a fun game I like to call “sit on the couch and watch people be assholes.” The way you play this game is, you sit on the nearest couch facing the entrance of the Departika gallery. You then watch people walk in the front door without looking left or right, but only forward. These individuals will then continue forward until they see a corner, they will peak around the corner timidly, then openly show their frustration over the lack of pandering to a community that refuses to actually care about their own events. Then—this part is very tricky—they will either leave in an angry rush, or they will turn to you and verbally express their disgust.
One night, when Departika was nice enough to hand out beer and wine, I had to request that a lady choose a different type of alcohol as we had unfortunately ran out of the kind she desired. Her reaction was to say something in mumbled voice, throw her cup at me and slobber on herself. One fellow Departikan explained to me last artwalk when I expressed my plan to blog about this topic that it would be like blogging about fireworks on the fourth of July, or something like that. I’m not sure, I was a little dazed off the wine I got from the studio next door.
