At the bottom of the steep hill on Union Street, there’s a plaza that has a space for rent that would be perfect for an art gallery. There’s art work at the Union Street Coffee House, but they don’t put on shows. The artwork that is hanging up is simply part of the character of the coffee shop, so there really isn’t anywhere to look at art in Spencerport. The best place to look at art on the west side is at Hart Gallery 27 in Brockport and I went to the art opening on Friday night.
I generally arrive early to things and tonight was no different. Right at 6:00PM, I entered the art gallery and immediately mixed in with the crowd. As I started looking at the small black and white pencil drawings on the wall, I overheard someone being introduced to the artist. He was an older gentleman with grey hair and a grey beard and we exchanged hellos as I continued looking at his work. I was struck by the wide variety of pictures. There was portraits of famous people and animals, and there was drawings of boats and various places. They were very well done, but simple too. They don’t wow the viewer, but one can definitely be impressed with how much the picture looks like a rhinoceraus or tiger or Mark Twain or Susan B. Anthony. For instance, the portrait of Willie Nelson looks just like him. There’s even a couple of artistic pictures that are titled Row Boat and Woman In Window that are very interesting.
At the front of the gallery, there is someone who greets the visitors and offers them wine. In the back of the gallery, there was cheese and crackers and soda and assorted other things. There was fifty-three pencil drawings all together at the show and a few of them were sold at this opening. The gallery is run by Sarah Hart, who puts on a new show every month. Along with the gallery, there are eight artist studios that are rented out.
The artist of this show was Alan Gurwitz and he did all the drawings during the pandemic. Alan lives in Henrietta, NY. It would be great to have an art gallery in Spencerport, but for now there is Hart Gallery 27 which is right off of Main Street at 27 Market Street in the village of Brockport.
Dan Bauman
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