The crazy artists who make Venice interesting

This weekend was the Venice Art Walk. This event supports the Venice Family Clinic which provides medical care to uninsured local residents. The weekend consists of several events. Gigi, Amy and I volunteered on Saturday on the home tour. This was a modern (as were they all) house with a lot of solar technology. As a thank you for our time, we got tickets to the Art Walk itself today. Amy has been on the Art Walk and she recommended that we focus on the food faire first and then pick our walking route by neighbourhood. This was a very good suggestion.

There were lots of great local restaurants offering food at the faire. I had chocolate chili from Cafe Surfas (which is also a great restaurant supply house) and ginger strawberry lemonade from Upstairs 2 (which is a restaurant attached to a wine shop). Amy's mini burgers from the Counter looked and smelled amazing, and Gigi's crepes from Acadie had amazingly fresh tomatoes (probably from the farmer's market). Before heading out to the studios we had cupcakes from Meditrina.

I wasn't sure what to expect from the studios. I've visited other artist studios and I'm usually more interested in seeing how the artists live in their spaces than in the art. Venice has always seemed crowded and hard to get to for me, so I was not familiar with most of the adorable little neighbourhoods that the walk took us through. The highlight for me was a few residences or studios where the work spaces really gave you a glimpse inside the slightly wacked out mind of a completely creative person. One of our favourites was a property consisting of 3 little bungalows all decorated with local art work and painted in intense colours. The owner collected about 10 or 15 different types of things which were grouped in several places throughout the property. He had a working outdoor bathtub and an open kitchen/living room area that we just thought would be fabulous for parties. The whole property was just completely over the top. Another house had mosaic tiles on just about everything, including the front door frame, part of an exterior wall and every pot in the yard. A third studio was the work space of a man who collected old glass and metal parts all crammed floor to ceiling in a dark little studio that literally looked like it was out of an old horror movie. He had several of those glass balls with the electrical discharge running up and down inside (what are those called?) and if you touch the glass, the spark comes to your hand on the other side of the glass! It was just unreal, unearthly, like what planet were we on?

Now I understand that these crazy artists are what makes Venice what it is and makes it so special.