Toledo Trip

Going through my list of things overdue for posting: this is from 7 months ago, so the date is sometime in late February.

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.

We only had the room until eleven, and nobody else was coming back from the tournament before then, so I headed into Toledo to find someplace to post up until the few available galleries and places to eat actually opened.

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 still get something out of it even if things aren't working out in an obvious way. I plan on sending personal invites to Condessa and the owners of Paula Brown. If Handmade Toledo ends up not being the Toledo venue for the show, then the people working there will also be receiving invites.
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.

My Kingdom of SoHo

Soho (sometimes capitalized as SoHo) is a neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, which is downtown in New York. I had the pleasure of walking around a lot of area on my recent trip there. It isn't a very large space compared to the city as a whole, but there's a lot in it.

Since the late 20th century the area has been making a strong comeback from a low point it reached after the 19th century concluded and the center of the city continued to move uptown. Even before that time, the dramatic change in the character and nature of the neighborhood drove out a lot of the middle class. By the 1880s and 90s Soho had lost 25% of its population. This reduced the price of property as lumber and textile companies, trade smiths, manufacturers, companies commercially selling dry-goods, and publishers moved in. After World War II ended in 1945, a lot of manufacturing and textile companies moved back down South. This left a lot of empty industrial buildings. Some of the buildings were repurposed as warehouses and printing plants; others were torn down to make way for parking lots and repair garages. By the 1950s it was known as Hell's Hundred Acres because of the little factories and sweatshops people were packed into to work, as well as the industrial wasteland-look it had taken on over the years.
The district didn't start to make a comeback until the 1960s when artists started to move into the area. Buildings with tall ceilings, a lot of windows, and lofts above them made for the perfect studio spaces. The new influx of people coming in brought back other businesses. Artists and other creative people in the area made it a go-to destination. This interest in the area on a larger-than-local scale brought in chain stores and larger companies with more money to invest in the district.

Today Soho is a very interesting and nice place to visit. There are hotels, stone-paved side streets, studios, galleries, coffee shops, book stores, chain stores from national and international companies, and boutique shops with all different kinds of stuff. There's also some murals, some graffiti, and some great architecture.

This was my first time visiting Soho, but I had known for some time hearing from different sources that it was an area with a lot of artists and interesting places to visit. Being called an artist, it was pretty coincidental that it went with my last name, so I always like to joke around and say it's my kingdom or that it was named after my family. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, the area actually gets its name from an acronym because the area is South of Houston St. What I didn't mention is that a similarly artistic and eclectic section of London's West End shares the same name is also what gave rise to the use of the name in New York. I plan on visiting that Soho too someday.

FOUR and someone else wrote their name in the dust on the windows on the top floor.

Soho boasts one of the largest collections of cast-iron architecture in New York. So much so that most of the area is included in what is now the preserved Cast-Iron Historic District, as designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Today it's considered one of the country's national historic landmarks. The Cast-Iron District consists of 26 blocks with about 500 buildings between them. As the name suggests, these buildings have architectural elements in which cast-iron plays an important role. The style and means of building were popular during the Industrial Revolution when cast-iron was cheap and steel had yet to be invented. The most apparent cast-iron features are the facades and fire escapes on the front and backs of the buildings, but a lot of the main framework in the buildings is cast-iron as well. Neo-classical and Romanesque architecture influenced the more decorative side of the buildings' design.

One day it won't be a joke, and I really will have business in the area. The next time I come back I'm bringing finished work, sketchbooks, some painting stuff, and expansion plans. Business will be the name of the game.

Among my future goals is becoming a Soho House member. Soho House is a global social club for people in the creative industries. Their membership is incredibly private. New members are put up for membership by current members to be approved by a board of members higher up. You can also apply to be a member. To maintain "the right balance of people," members are often purged from the group. I've seen a lot of talented people, so I'd be lying to myself if I thought I deserved to be a member before some of these other people. At least at this point in time. However, anyone who knows me knows that even though I hit some setbacks and my work isn't were it could be, nothing comes before my artwork in my life. Not to mention most of my last name's out front, on their other locations, on the website, and the business cards. It seems like it would be really fitting, like it was meant to be.

photo credit: Soho House New York's Twitter (@sohohousenyc) 

Why do people join the club? To connect and meet with other creative individuals in various art and media-related fields in a public, but still personal, setting. The Soho House in New York is a private hotel. It has halls for events, rooms to lounge, work, meet, and sleep in, a restaurant, several bars, a spa, a screening room, and a rooftop patio that includes a pool and another bar. Soho House's other locations also include bars, clubs, and venues.

photo credit: Carolyn Sohoza

A really cool door and doorway.

One of the things I would like to do as soon as my other, older work is finally completed. It's nice to see advertising done in a more traditional manner again.

Street art starring Jonathan Banks.

More than half of the galleries I went to were closed. Sunday was not the best day to pick for gallery-hopping.

Thankfully I found a few decent ones that were open. I didn't take pictures in the galleries. Usually they don't let you, and in some of the galleries the work wasn't worth photographing. I wasn't there to be inspired visually anyway. I'm always open to inspiration of course, but that wasn't my main reason for wanting to go in. I already have a lot of ideas for artwork, and I'm in the process of getting better with what I know as well as expanding the different mediums and styles I use. It's the business end of the art world that I know very little about.
I mostly wanted to know things like how much the artists were charging for different work made in different sizes in different mediums, or how the consistency of how much they sold affected the price of their work.

You should go see the work for yourself anyway. There's a big difference between seeing a photograph  and seeing the work in person.

photo credit: Carolyn Sohoza

A very cool place filled with lots of objects resembling different sea life like coral, sea cumbers, and anemones. I'm still not sure what they are. They're like sculptures and light fixtures combined. There's some other diverse and unrelated stuff in there too that's pretty cool.

The Drawing Center is an interesting gallery and studio space to visit.

Artwork by Louise Despont (Instagram @louisedespont), on what looked like connected accounting sheets from a lot of years ago.

There were more than these two. These were just my favorites. The more rounded of the shapes  remind me of sacred geometry, which is the use of geometric shapes and proportions in a more aesthetic and symbolic sense rather than a practical or mathematical sense.

Free form texture and depth made with line variance. The same technique builds up the images seen in block prints, etchings, and some lithographs.

These were sort of interesting if your'e into Dadaist and more Modernist work. I wasn't holding back though, I had to crack a joke about that completely black page in the middle on the bottom row. I have no idea what compelled you to hang that up, because nobody's seeing anything in it but a black rectangle. Even the one on the far right in that same row is an unreadable ink smudge. There's no point to typography if you can't read or even see any of the type. You might as well hang up plain sheets of black construction paper. I'm not about making fun of people's work, but I will call you out if you don't even try or really go in the opposite direction and try to take concepts into literal nothingness and irrelevance. I'm just being honest. I don't hold anyone to a standard I don't already hold myself to, and I don't expect anything less from anyone else. Free free to send your harshest critiques my way.

Graphic design: fonts, logos, and graphics.

I'm all about that sassy ass.

They had a really old binder with different fonts.

photo credit: Carolyn Sohoza

A gallery dedicated entirely to horses, and not just any horses.

From their website: "SDD's mission is to promote Soho, NY as a premier destination for world-renowned design and to preserve Soho's unique history as a global center for creativity." Done and done. Soho Life for life. Of course, it could use some work from the Soho himself.

Sometimes it's hard to tell whether something's a commissioned mural, street art, or graffiti. They're all pretty great regardless of what kind of artist did the work or who gave permission.

NoMo SoHo is another upscale hotel with additional features.

They don't have exclusive membership though, so I was able to go inside and check it out.

They have a really nice bar setup.

Their sunroom dining space.

To be more specific, the stone-paved streets are Belgian blocks, which are often confused with cobblestones. The blocks have a cobbled appearance, but are smoother, flatter, and more uniform in in their rectangular shape.

Posting bills anyway.

Soho Thai

Murals between Soho, Little Italy, and Chinatown.

Wear and tear and still there.

Sohotel

A selfie with Soho behind me.

The tall buildings in the far back make up the Financial District. A little bit of the low area in front of them is Tribeca. Soho is in front of that, but above the diagonal bar coming downward toward my neck.

If you lean back far enough, 5th and 7th Ave form an "A" with Washington Square Park crossing the two. Soho is right in the middle making up the top triangle of the "A" just past the park and the university next to it.

Looking over the kingdom.

photo credit: Carolyn Sohoza

I'll be back soon, Soho, and we'll make some great things happen.

And that's Soho for you.