Bringing the crawl back into the Art Crawl

This post is lagging somewhat behind last Friday’s James North Art Crawl here in Hamilton, but maybe I’m just a stickler for stylistic consistency.

Despite my Hammer-girl roots, this was my first time attending the monthly Art Crawl in Hamilton’s burgeoning James Street North artist community. Needless to say, I had been admonished on many occasions for not having yet taken in this blossoming of activity, poor timing and living in the UK be damned. But for all intents and purposes, I’m a Hamiltonian once more with no excuses for passing over such a significant event on the local art calendar.

Which does make me wonder what everyone else’s excuse was.

The one common feature of any art crawl in my experience has been a strong sense of community. In fact, the crawl is one of those rare instances where that word stops being all ephemeral buzz and actually begins to take on physical meaning. It’s a physical proof full of crowded galleries and art-cliques, which are annoying in themselves, but this does at least prove the existence of invested people behind these events.

In light of that, the short supply of visitors within each gallery was a discouraging sight. I never thought I would lament the experience of attending openings devoid of rubbish-spewing, kissy-kissy art groupies, where I was given ample space to actually look at the art itself, but there you have it. The only congregating of any significance was happening in the courtyard of Christ’s Church Cathedral, at a safe remove from the admittedly mediocre photography exhibition set up in the Cathedral’s basement - and why anyone would look at blurry photos of the Cathedral’s wonderful woodcarvings when the real thing was being warmly opened to view in the Cathedral itself is beyond me. I can hope these people had in fact made their way into the other thirteen venues on the Art Crawl’s roster, but I had my doubts. Especially when a bubbly woman tackled my viewing companion with an invite to a Rumi Poetry event based on the fact that he was wearing an alpaca wool poncho: ‘Any man wearing a poncho must be into Rumi!’ Apparently, my black leather jacket and matching gloves did not signal an equal devotion to Rumi, bless.

The real shame of this naturally being that far too many people missed out on some real gems along James North that night. The Factory was showing some really evocative video in their screening space, the sort that made me wish once again for better circumstances in which this stuff could be properly viewed (no art-crawler tends to stick around for the full duration). And while socially-engaged art tends to push my inner (and outer) cynic, the drawings from the Wesley Urban Ministries on show at Hamilton Artists Inc. were more often impressive than not, demonstrating equal shares of honest intensity and shockingly understated skill. It was a revelation, to say the least.

I’m also inclined to give props to Loose Canon Gallery for generating one of the more welcoming spaces along the street, complete with candy and participatory collage action. Having been closed altogether this past summer, it’s good to see Loose Canon entering into the fray with something more than the mere appearance of art. Hamilton is gonna need a great deal more activity like this to get its crawl up and running as it should.

In the past several days, more seasoned veterans of the Art Crawl have admitted that this one was far from its best. We can then at least hope for better come November.

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