As you all know by now, last Friday March 9 2007 was ’39 Art Day’ a.k.a. ‘Thank You Art Day’ and a total of 22 local galleries, artist groups or individual artists participated in our own Liverpool section of this international event.
The Japanese artist, Yoshiaki Kaihatsu (www.yoshiakikaihatsu.com) who started the whole thing is understandably thrilled with the response and hopes to see more UK cities involved next year. We will certainly be doing our bit here, March 9 falls on Sunday in 2008 (its a Leap Year) so we’ll probably make a weekend of it and get more people involved.
So we spent Friday doing a sort of tour of inspection and found Lydia Bates at her Artfinder Gallery still making origami cranes after distributing some 600 or so round the local offices and shops. She was offering 15% off all sales for the day.
Meanwhile over at Dot Art, Lucy Byrne had just made her first (20%) discounted sale of the day and was expecting more potential customers during the lunch break.
Our biggest coup, of course, was to get Sefton Council to agree to keep the Antony Gormley ‘Another Place’ statues and offer FREE ENTRY.
Rennie’s in Bold Street had already made a few extra sales at 15% discount to people quoting ‘Thank You Art’, Microzine had their sign saying 10% off Ben Allen pictures plus free coffee (though MicroPuschka hadn’t opened when we arrived – too early).
Open Eye were hoping to sell some of their lovely photography books at 10% discount.
Pictured above are the staff at Editions and Bluecoat Display Centre also with their ‘I Love 39’ poster on prominent display, keen to offer refreshments and discount on sales.
Below you can see the fantastic ‘I Heart Art’ cookies made by local artists for the opening of the Andy Fung exhibition at the Bridewell and Lis Edgar at the entrance to her new art and collectibles shop ‘Collage’ in Roscoe Hall.
There are lots more pictures on flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/34175263@N00/sets/72157594580851622/
See the full details and list of participants at
https://www.artinliverpool.com/list/39artday.htm