Photo Essay: Gallery Night (on the East Side)

Hitting up everything on the Madison Museum Of Contemporary Art's twice-annual Gallery Night can be daunting; Friday's edition crammed nearly 60 art shows into basically four hours. So Decider's photo gang chose to head out on foot and check out the diverse nooks and crannies of the East Side. That made for a full evening in and of itself, encompassing mixed-media, paintings, a music experiment, glass, and at least one refreshment (it wouldn't be Gallery Night without wine and snacks, eh?) that qualified as a work of art, too.

At the Commonwealth Gallery, Kendra Larson's (one of the folks behind The Project Lodge) MFA show Signal-Scapes And Afflicted Animals took a charred, blackened look at the natural world, touched up with some bold streaks of color. The menacing "Attack Owl" hung with its one red eye and one green eye on level with the visitors'. (Photo: Joe.)

The Evolution Art Collective's show on Dickinson Street was a big old mixed bag—from outlandish baby photos to mixed-media paintings from an artist named Jessie HarlaQuinn. Our favorite was this one, entitled "The Hypochondriac." (Photo: Joe.)

Evolution also boasted by far the best snack spread of the evening, mostly because of this enormous smoked salmon with a cherry jammed into its eye socket. (Photo: Joe.)

Gallery Night also coincided with the two-night run of Chele Isaac’s video installation Things Are Supposed To Get Increasingly Beautiful Starting Today at The Project Lodge. The front windows were entirely lined with black paper, and here was what you saw if you peeked through one of the holes. The view was a little different from each hole because the video was projected onto these large white orbs as well as onto the screen. (Photo: Scott.)

Studio Paran's a glassblowing studio, holding a glassblowing demonstration in one part of its workshop and a separate art show in the room next door. Richard Jones, Thomas Ferrella, and Ann Orlowski's Cityscapes included grids of Polaroids depicting all kinds of street signs. (Photo: Eric.)

Pong Gallery turned out to be a small space in between Alchemy and Ideal Bar. Sara Meredith occupied one corner with her mixed-media works, which were at once awash in color but also look like they've been dredged from a murky riverbed. (Photo: Eric.)

Gallery Night could use more interactive stuff, like what DNA Studios had going on here. Four musicians (bass, keyboards, drums, saxophone) were playing together in the recording studio, but each was hearing a different mix through his headphones. Each mix was also routed to one of four additional pairs of headphones that were mounted on Styrofoam heads, where visitors can pick them up and hear what each player was hearing. (Photo: Eric.)

Winnebago Studios is always worth visiting on Gallery Nights, just to take in the variety of the two-dozen or so artists who share this big workspace. This year, we encountered Karen Timm's creations "Mr. Snowpea" (on a skiing expedition, it seems) and "Miss Corn." (Photo: Jessica.)