A perfect Spring evening, art displays and free wine brought a few hundred people downtown Friday, for the 2018 Art & Wine Walk.
Eighteen businesses on Main Street and Lakin Avenue offered wine and snacks, and the works of one or more artists who were on hand to chat with participants.
Store owners said the event typically brings in the neighborhood of 200 people into their businesses. “If you serve wine, they will come,” one businesswoman noted.
For area artists, it was a chance to show their work.
Von Pounds, who was at Images by Emily Photography with his watercolors and drawings, is a member of Artists at Large, a group that meets monthly at the Great Bend Public Library. “I studied art when I was young, in college,” he said. “I just got back into it the last couple of years.”
Business owner Emily Seiwert homemade cookies were as popular as her wine cocktail.
Pounds, a former city engineer, lives north of Larned and converted a building on his land into a studio.
Allen Bailey, the former “marshal” of Dodge City, now a resident of Windom, worked on a painting as he visited with people who came through Renue Salon & Spa.
“I have been painting for probably 40 years,” Bailey said.
Another artist who was working on a piece during the event was Carson Norton from Leoti, who does bronze sculptures and paintings. He was adding clay to a model inside Gambino’s, where Defy Expectations Clothing Co. had set up a popup as well.
“This is impressive,” an Art & Wine Walk participant said as she stopped to admire finished samples of his work. He explained the lost-wax process of creating a bronze sculpture, how different chemicals create the “patination,” or different metal colors.
Diana Dawson at Renue Salon & Spa said a crowd formed around Bailey to watch him paint. Dawson said the Art & Wine walk brought regular customers and fresh faces into the shop.
“It was kind of exciting,” she said. Even after the event ended at 7 p.m., people continued coming in for another hour. This is one City of Great Bend promotion she hopes will continue. “I had fun.”