Loosie Art Event
The other night, my friend Toyin and I went to check out this free art event called Loosies in downtown Atlanta.
It took place on multiple floors in one of the buildings on Broad Street, and to get in, you have to walk through this newsstand, kind of like a bodega in New York.
It felt a little clandestine, like when you walk into a room walled with a bookcase, and you pull a particular book down and the wall rotates to reveal secret rooms and passageways. OK, it wasn’t quite that, but had similar energy.
Art surrounded us wall-to-wall, and each floor was very different. As we took the elevator between floors 1, 3, 9, and 26, the art oscillated between murals directly painted on the wall, collages, framed art, interactive installations, suspended sculptures, and silent films projected onto the wall.
Hundreds of pieces of the most colorful, diverse, celebratory, exploratory works of art decorated the walls, ranging in medium from paint to chalk to pen, and everything in between.
And so many of my favorite pieces celebrated women of color, specifically black women. ❤
Art was everywhere the eye could see. Pieces spanned entire walls, wrapped around corners, were tucked away behind door cracks. There was an element of discovering the art, stumbling upon it.
As people milled around every nook and cranny, it was cool to observe their reactions, observe how they became triggered or inspired by what they saw.
It reminded me to get back into my own art.
I loved being there; a cacophony of color splashed huge swaths of energy everywhere; it was hard to not take pictures of everything.
It was such an interesting blend of wtf and inspired pieces. A bonus was that sometimes the artists were present!
After we browsed to our heart’s content, we sipped wine and sat by the floor to ceiling windows, chatting and catching up.
And having our bathroom selfie get photobombed!
All in all, a terrific, free evening, and we’re going to have to go back to check it out even more. ❤