Oct. 7,
2020
| Dennis Hackett
dennis@thereminder.com
WESTFIELD – After the COVID-19 pandemic put most of its events on hold for the year, ArtWorks of Westfield will be hosting its first art show of the year outside in downtown Westfield from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Oct. 17.
Bill Westerlind, the founder of ArtWorks, said the show will be a scaled down version of the art walk event they have done in the past.
“It will be an art walk format. Given the pandemic and the health issues with public gatherings, we had to shrink it down to a smaller model than before and the art walk model accommodates that,” he said.
Westerlind added that the art walk will talk place between School Street and Church Street.
“Within that block we’re going to have artists on the sidewalk, and we can accommodate up to 12 artists or authors. They’re going to have some space on the sidewalk in front of our merchant partners downtown,” he said.
Each artist will have up to a 10 by 10 space with six feet in between each artist and author’s space and all visitors will be required to wear masks and properly socially distance between each other.
He said that the advertising for this event was different so far because Artworks wants to prevent a large gathering so people can stay safe.
“At this point we haven’t really promoted the show for the fact that we’re nervous we’re going to attract a big crowd, which is strange. In this environment we want to attract some people but we’re just cognizant of the fact that we don’t want to attract thousands of people. It’s a really weird time for all of us,” Westerlind said.
Like some of ArtWorks’ earlier events this year, including its public mural, he said he was hoping the show fills residents’ need for social interaction.
By having the event downtown, Westerlind said he was hoping it would bring more business to the area that day.
“The downtown merchants need people to come out. One of the spinoffs of doing the art walk format downtown is that folks can then wander into the shops. Those folks, like all of us, are hurting, and to get some more traffic downtown would be a win for everyone,” he said.
At the time of this writing, Westerlind said four artists and two authors had already signed up for the show, and he said that several of the artists were new to Westfield and the show would be a benefit to everyone.
“It’s sort of an introduction to public display and get their name out and show their work. It’s’ really good for the artists and the authors because they’ve had no platform now for seven months to show their work except online, and online is not the same as in person,” he said.
In the event of rain, Westerlind said ArtWorks would have to cancel the show.
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