My friend Butters was going to a regional Dragonball-Z card tournament just outside Toledo with some other mutual friends of ours: Alex, Justin, and Butters (there are two of them).
The motel was in Holland, which is in Springfield Township. Not to be confused with the town of Springfield, OH outside Columbus.
It's been put off longer because of the seemingly endless line of BS problems I deal with, but I've been working on putting together a show to come back in big way. It's been a while since I've shown my work publicly. I haven't been completely unproductive though.
I've done a handful of commissions, and the Daily Sketches are still sporadically going - including some sketches and drawings from my Life & Travel sketchbook I haven't shown much of.
Going back to the show: it's a loosely-themed body of work, but the theme extends to every aspect of the show, and I have two (maybe three) other people interested in taking part in it. I'm hoping to get a few more people involved.
As I mentioned, I wanted to make this show a comeback in a big way. So aside from getting a good number of artists involved in showing their work, I wanted to have the show "tour" to a few different cities around here in the Great Lakes area of the Midwest.
I'd like to develop more of a presence in my state of Michigan, but I'd also like to have more presence in my overall region.
Toledo would be one of the cities I would like the show to tour through.
Sunday was not the best day to go. There were a number of galleries that were not open. I would think most people would have time to go check out a gallery on a weekend, when they aren't working. Especially Sundays, which a lot of people set aside as a day of rest.
The room and tournament were in the Spencer/Springfield Township area of Lucas County, just outside Toledo. The venue was this community hall called the Sultan Club.
Different cities have a different animal statue that they have replicas of in different places, and they're each painted differently. Mackinac Island had tortoises. Toledo has frogs.
I came across this little coffee shop, Claro Coffee Bar. It was open, and not crowded, so it seemed like the perfect spot to set up and figure out what my game plan for the day would be.
I made a few calls, and checked a few websites of places I was trying to check out.
They were a little light on food options, but the coffee was good.
Rustbelt Coffee also looked like a nice spot, but I saw it later when I was heading someplace else I was trying to get to at a particular time.
One of my first stops was this shop-venue called Handmade Toledo, which is right next door to Claro. They pride themselves on selling merchandise that supports the local area as well as locally-made art and craft-work - something I'm also very much about.
Entry to the hall in the back that can be rented out for a variety of different events.
The people working said they have regular craft shows.
While Handmade Toledo wasn't one of my planned stops in the search for a venue, it definitely made the Maybe List. Their staff is also very friendly and informative.
I moved on in search of other possible options.
There was this crazy broken-down car by the Paula Brown Gallery.
They had a really cool exhibition by Dr. Atomic (a pseudonym for collaborative twin artist brothers Mark and Michael Kersey) which I didn't photograph for policy and courtesy reasons.
I spoke with the owners, but they didn't seem especially interested in the show idea. To be fair, I couldn't expect too much asking what seemed to be fairly conservative people to exhibit controversial work.
While the Kerseys' exhibition was cool in terms of technique and style, it also featured pretty tame subject matter and portraits of famous people.
Artist fun fact: if you paint famous people, no matter what style it's in or how good it is, people will hang it up almost anywhere. I'm not sure why that's never addressed, or if we're supposed to be captivated because we know who is being featured. Everybody losing their minds over recognition alone makes me less inclined to care or follow suit.
I know that sounds cynical, but it's true. It's not because I'm mad about it. Like I said, I knew not to expect much.
I stopped into Michael's Bar & Grill to grab a burger and a beer - and to do my Daily Sketch for the day. I don't think I caught her name, but one of the girls working there was also from Michigan.
I left the sketch like I do with all my napkin sketches.
If you haven't seen any of them, I usually post them to my Instagram (@d.sohoza) story. Sometimes I'll post them to my SnapChat (y0soho <- first 0 is a zero).
Since then I've made a Daily Sketch story highlight category on my Instagram in case you missed one during its initial 24-hour cycle. Admittedly, I'm still working on sticking to the "Daily" part.
Next I checked out 20 North Gallery.
They also had a cool exhibition on Dan Robbins, who invented the Paint By Numbers brand, that I didn't photograph for the same reasons I didn't photograph the other one earlier.
I also wanted to stay focused and not draw attention away from my purpose for being there.
The gallery manager Condessa seemed much more open to the show idea, but the gallery didn't have any openings to hold events until 2019. At the time that seemed like too long to wait, but as usual I'm encountering more setbacks. Maybe by the time I'm ready they'll have some openings. At the time my thoughts were not wanting to wait that long. At this point I guess it also falls on the Maybe List.
Another possible venue selection, with another frog.
The show is based on the concept of burning, so holding the show in a vacant firehouse or temporarily borrowing space in a running firehouse was my original idea.
I had approached one of the guys at City Hall in Romulus back in Michigan about possibly using a vacant firehouse they had right next door to their building. He seemed interested at first, but never got back to me after I had checked back in about the progress of the proposal.
That's alright though. The artwork was still in its earlier stages, and I have different plans about the local venues for the show now.
They had these artsy benches in a few different places around town.
I'm not going to lie, I have no idea who that is, but it's a nice mural.
Comment below at the bottom of the post if you do. I'm curious.
I had stopped at the tournament earlier to see how everyone was doing. I only had one gallery left to check out, and I thought I had time, so I headed back to the event to see what was up with the rest of the group. Then I was off again.
One of the galleries I had specifically came to see and speak to was closed, even though it said on the web in several places that it would be open. It was especially disappointing because of the few galleries that were open that Sunday, it was the last on the list.
After that didn't pan out, I decided to head into Downtown Johnny's. It was a nice day despite the short scattered showers, so they had the windows in the upper level open. I sat there for a bit while I figured out what my next move was.
The group I came with had started heading home already, since they had all been eliminated in the tournament, but I was waiting to hear back about meeting up with some people I knew in the area.
I know where to go, what to have, and what I'll need to do to be more prepared next time.
I also found a bunch of good locations to put up promotional posters and leave event postcards (which I've already started designs for - they're almost finished).
I was able to meet up with my friend Nico. He's originally from Toledo, but I met him while we working on a farm out in Oregon.
He's a really good, positive person to be around.
After catching up with Nico for a bit, it was pretty late, and everyone else had already started heading back home - so I left. At the time I was still looking for work, and needed to get back to that.
It was a pretty nice, productive trip for being so short. I'll definitely be back soon though, because there're still a few more galleries I want to check out and proposition.
If you're from the Toledo area, and would like to help take part in making the show happen, feel free to reach out to me on my email: dereksohoza@yahoo.com, or if follow me on social media, send me a message (facebook.com/dsohoza).
Looking forward to next time, Toledo.
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