What size is your pretzel?

Saturday I decided that I needed to get my culture-on. It was a beautiful Saturday and it was open studio time in the South End.  I would like to fancy myself a cultured art person. I am a very creative person and I always have thousands of ideas streaming around my head of things I can do creatively.  So going to open studios always fuels this.  Ok, you caught me...I've only gone to open studios once in my life before.  But, I feel like open studios would fuel that.

So a friend and I decided to take the day to venture to open studios. It started with a beautiful sign outside that said "free parking".  You can't get much more artistic in the South End of Boston in my book than that.

When you walk into people's lofts and see their idea of art, it can always be a little challenging for someone as sarcastic as myself.  Especially someone who doesn't understand how a white canvas with a piece of hair on it at the MOMA can be considered contemporary art.  If that was contemporary art, you could call my purse art with the stuff you find in that on a daily basis.

At first, I went in thinking I would stand and look at people's work all serious..with my hand on my chin.  I would be quiet.  That lasted about 15 seconds until I realized that these artists were not only selling art; but they were giving away free food.  And it was like each artist was not only competing on their work and selling their work.  Yeah, yeah....any artist would tell you they are not competing. They are doing "their own thing"...WRONG.  You are always competing.  And how do I know this?  Because of the food.

All artists thought they needed to give out pretzels.  All. Of. Them.  Some had little pretzels. Some had full on pretzel sticks.  That is like the rich houses you go to on Halloween who give out full Snicker bars.  I totally bought a pair of earrings from the guys who also gave out the full pretzel sticks and starbursts.  All of them had hummus and spritzer water too.

We finally left after a couple of hours of art peeping, about 20 different postcards from artists that were also free, which I can in turn frame for free art and a stomach full of pretzels and I turned to my friend and said, "wow...there are a lot of white people here."

Honestly, I have to ask myself how some of these people afford to work in these studios. My guess.  Trust funds.  Not that these people aren't creative or that they don't derserve everything they have.  But honeslty, let's not kid ourselves thinking that cutting pictures from magazines and making framed pictures allows you to afford a loft like this.  If that is the case, I am doing something really really really wrong.  I thought it would have been funny to bring a fan into that studio. 

That is what I learned at open studios. That white people like art, pretzels, bubble water and overpriced canvases that make their exposed brick apartments more appealing.