Dear Pennies & Pens,
This past weekend, I made a short trip to Dallas (one of my favorite cities) for theĀ Dallas Observer’s Artopia 2015Ā event. It was fabulous! I cannot emphasize this enough. Although, I somehow I missed the fashion shows and music performances (I was too caught up meeting and checking out all the art and artists), I had an amazing time at the event.
So what is Artopia Dallas? As stated on the website, “Artopia is a celebration of Dallas Culture & Art that incorporates food, drink, art, music and fashion into one evening. This one-night fete celebrates the exciting, vibrant Cultural scene in Dallas.
It’s a sensory overload full of culture, fashion, visual arts, performing arts and so much more. It’s an event with a cause as the Observer is awarding local artists with monetary grants for service to the Arts and the Community.”
That said, when I walked into the venueĀ Centennial Hall in Fair Park, I was met with beautiful lights, cool music, art, fashion, and people. It was quite an experience. Centennial Hall is huge so there was plenty of room for everything. That’s so key to me with events because there’s nothing worse than bumping into people because the venue is too small.
Like I said earlier, I got caught up looking at the art because each artist had their own space with their work on display and quite a few artists were live painting at the event. I must give props to those artists because I have never written a blog post while a group of people watches me.
I know that it was a nerve racking experience to create in front of people who are judging, praising, and critiquing you.Ā My favorite artists from Artopia were Adam Jones, NOBODY (Terrence Lewis), and Jeremy Biggers. I honestly think I spent most of my time looking at their work and sipping my wine (y’all know how I feel about wine).
Overall, it was a dope night save for a couple buzzkills in the form of me identifying Adam Jones’ painting of Tyson as Ali (it was the wine not me), and some weird dude staring at me in the face but never actually speaking to me.
Also, for all my picture taking, I took not a single photo of myself before, during, or after the event. For this, I’m firing myself. #GirlBye
Artopia Dallas was an awesome event! The 2015 event was the 5th time Artopia has taken place. I cannot wait until next year!
