Peggi had the perfect route picked out for our multifaceted Friday night journey around the city. Our first stop was Rochester Picture Framing where I picked up a piece of glass for a drawing I’m putting in a show at I-Square Gallery. Next stop was dinner at Trata in the old Armory on Culver Road. Not only have they repurposed the building while letting the old skeleton show, they’ve repurposed the furniture and the even the water glasses which were made from sawed off wine bottles. They fit perfectly with the old timey water bottles and managed to make tap water look elegant. (Our water did win first place at the State Fair this year.)
Three bars, three floors, this was a busy place on Friday night. Peggi read some not-so-good reviews online so we took our server’s recommendations. We split orders of sautéed calamari with corn and black beans, brussels sprout salad with a lemon vinaigrette and the fresh Gulf Coast scallops that were Fed-Exed in that day. Everything right on.
Onward to Bop Shop to pick up tickets for the Sunday Chandler Travis Philharmonic show then to the Art Store in Southtown Plaza where I picked up a frame and some archival mat board. And then down the road to the Dyer Gallery at RIT where Pete Monacelli and George Wegman were in a show of WildRoot artists, a collective from the early seventies. George had a fantastic abstract charcoal drawing in there that both Peggi and I took as an artist’s studio.
We drove back through downtown to the Axom Gallery for the opening of their new show of paintings by Jim DeLucia. The work is somewhere between painterly illustration and pop and looked great in this space but our conversation was centered on dancing and the lessons gallery owner Rick Muto and his wife have been taking. Rick told us he really loved the Samba and had since a Popeye cartoon he vividly remembered from childhood. I told him I would track it down and send him a link.
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