Archive for May 9th, 2008

Still trying to catch up on blogging all the art stuff I’ve been doing. The weekend before last, I ran into photographer and JP real estate macher Andy Brilliant at a “photo brunch” party in Brookline. He turned me on to an event happening that same day called Art House Boston. So I headed on over to JP.

Art House Boston is a collaboration of real estate agents and artists that puts on art shows in homes that are on the market. It increases foot traffic for the real estate agents, makes the homes look good, and gives some exposure to artists. That’s what I call a win-win.

This time, the show was at 34-36 Tower Street in JP, a pair of 3-floor, 3-bedroom, 2.5-bath townhomes. Featured artists were photographers Adam Lampton and Andrew Brilliant, painters Elisabeth Cugini, Kelly Carmody, Russell Eric Moore, Richard Perkins and Seth Minkin, and mixed-media artists Gretjen Helene Hargesheimer.

I’ve already said I’m a big fan of Andy’s photos, so I’ll just add that the work he showed at Art House was of the moody black and white type, of Prague and other great cities, just my kind of thing. Also worth calling out were the hilarious and often scatological paintings of Seth Minkin. Check out the sushi paintings, a steal at only $50 each, but who can get just one? Kudos to Gretjen Helene for using duck eggs in her work, among other anatomical oddities.

I don’t know when the next Art House will be, but I hope people who like to look at art and people who like to look at homes will both support it.

With apologies to Ed Ruscha…

Look really closely at the top sign. See the bolt at the M of “EACH MONTH”? It says “SOMERVILLE” under there just inside the red margin. Ditto the no bikes sign - below the black border, SOMERVILLE.

Hmm. This sign is close to where I parked. It might say SOMERVILLE on the top sign like the one previous, but it’s covered up by the lower sign, which has no city designation.

A split decision here. The street cleaning sign does say SOMERVILLE in small letters, but the permit parking sign says nothing.

This pair has no city on it. Are we in Cambridge yet? Probably not, since the street cleaning days match the Somerville signs.

This is definitely the largest type size for the word SOMERVILLE so far.

Aha! Pretty clear lettering by Cambridge, plus a different street cleaning zone.

More Cambridge.

CITY OF CAMBRIDGE. Can’t miss that.

Ditto.

In sight of Mass Ave, if you weren’t sure yet, you should be now.

The tally: Five signs in Somerville, about half of them saying Somerville, and six signs in Cambridge, all unambiguous. A pretty poor showing by Somerville since only about 1/4 to 1/3 of the length of the street is Cambridge.  The facts aren’t in doubt, but it took some squinting to find them.