Friday evening was the kick off to Art Walk in dowtown Coeur d’ Alene, Id. This is a great community event that showcases and celebrates art. This years theme for Art Walk is Art from the Heart, 14 galleries hosting opening receptions that feature new and old local artists that have a heart for Art. The event also offers many hands on activities for families, as well as food and wine. You can get almost a nostalgic feeling seeing people gather together to learn become art critic's for the week whether experienced or not. There are many artists being showcased this week and their works range from your classic to the abstract. I was personally inspired by Michael Horswill who is from Coeur d’Alene and a Professor at NIC. I viewed his works at ArtSpirit, which is gallery on 2nd St., it is well lit, open, and offers a great canvas for the art. The exhibit being shown are relief sculptures made with the medium of wood, fabric, wire, steel, copper, vines, bamboo, tin, branches, and beeswax and while using acrylic, stains and a technique called encaustic (which is burning the color in using wax). These sculptures are raw and industrial as you can see from the materials, and very captivating. I love the simplistic depth of the show. These pieces have forms that tend to be very familiar to our trained eye, and it is easy just to take them as we seem them at first glance. In pausing and viewing closer you see something completely different a whole new texture, color, line and it changes the whole piece or your idea of it anyway. A paticular piece I had this experience with was "One Voice" which looks like a giant horn, this was my first glance. This sculpture is comprised of welded together stell washers and rawhide. My second glance was seeing the individual piece that completed this work of Art Michael has a way of expressing life through the art while leaving a journey yet for the viewer. His philosophy for art is almost tangible as he says he learned young “the intricate small things that made up a larger picture were somehow more important than the picture itself” and his relationship with nature is at the center of what he does. This knowledge is what he sets out to leave us with, humbled by our roles in nature we are creators and destroyers but have the predicament of living in the moment, and yet not least or greater than the next creation. Every detail is important in his work and if you leave one out you will miss the beauty of the piece.

I encourage you to get out and experience this event and for those that have young ones (or borrow one) they have many activities and programs going on throughout the week to expose the younger generation to the Art’s . Which makes me ask how important do you think it is to support, learn grow, and share with the youth events like these? And what does it say and do if we don’t?