Meeting Notes 1/23/10

Thanks to everyone for attending our January meeting. Some of us enjoyed a tour of the fabulous new Salemme Foundation Gallery before our dinner. If you have not seen the gallery, please contact Joe Skrapits for a tour.

Sarah welcomed new members and spoke about our grant project which will feature thirteen 2'x2'x2' artist designed plexiglass cubes. The theme for this community art project is re-urbanization. The cubes will be on display, possibly at an indoor space, in June.

Pete Lewnes announced that he has been appointed President of the Allentown Arts Commission, and that Sarah Fulton has been nominated to serve on the Arts Commission. Congratulations to both Pete and Sarah. Pete spoke about Arts Ovation Award nominations which are due January 29th. Pete has gotten the Allentown City Arts blog running, and I will put up a link soon.
More great news from Pete: he informed us about a LANTA grant which is available for the restoration of public sculptures, murals at the transportation center, and other public works of art. Also, he is working on a new fabulous culinary school for 7th St.

Heather Haas is looking for artists to paint murals on garage doors in the city. For more details on this project, contact us at the e-mail and we will forward to Heather.

Diane Teti talked about the success of Art Mart. Business has slowed down a little since the holidays but she plans on having special events and artist workshops in the space soon. Channel 69 News, TV 2 News, and Lehigh Valley Magazine covered Art Mart, so there was good publicity. There was one sentence in the Morning Call's Retail Watch section. See link to Art Mart at our sidebar, and contact Diane if you would like more information. Diane also mentioned the idea of a Second Saturday Art Walk on Hamilton St. And don't miss Word Wednesdays at the Brew Works, organized by Yodi and Kari Holmes.

Greg Coates is featured in Lehigh Valley Magazine.

Angie Villa brought up the idea of a future group fine art show, possibly at the Allentown Art Museum Community Room gallery where we held our Velocity Show last year. If anyone has any suggestions or would like to coordinate the show, please contact us at the e-mail.
Also, if anyone is interested in helping create and maintain a Facebook page for Chen Arts, which links to the blog posts, please contact us at the e-mail. So far, Stefan and Kate expressed interest at the meeting.

I forgot to mention this at the meeting: The Villas, local original power-pop band, with special appearances by 8 yr. old Gianni Villa and 26 yr. old Pat Villa, will be performing at Mayfair, Sunday May 30th 5:30-7pm Lakeside Stage. See link at our sidebar.

Matt is working on "Fringe Fest" a music and art festival. I believe he mentioned Art and Soul Gallery would be involved too. Sorry, I missed some of the details here, maybe Matt can talk about that in a comment?

Please feel free to add anything in the comments. Thanks to everyone. The art scene in Allentown has really taken off. Thanks to Jenny Chen for outstanding Malaysian food. Thanks to Sarah for her work at the blog and e-mails. See you in February.

Angie Villa