For more than 14 years, it’s been a monthly tradition in Amherst. The first Thursday of the month, people gather downtown from 5 to 8 p.m. and take a walk — the better to touch base with all the different places around town where art is displayed.
Now the “Amherst Art Walk,” begun in March 2002, is poised for an update — and it’s also been renamed.
Thursday’s event has been rechristened “Amherst Arts Night Plus” to reflect the idea of making each first Thursday a broader downtown event, one that will offer expanded entertainment, such as children’s activities, as well as an opportunity for people to eat downtown and visit local shops.
It’s all part of a overall push to establish close connections between the arts and business communities, said Amy Crawley, the chair of “Amherst Arts Night Plus,” and to build on the state designation the downtown region received this spring as a Cultural District.
The latter allows Amherst to access various state resources, such as marketing information and strategies, for linking arts and businesses more closely, with the hope of expanding overall economic development. Downtown areas in Easthampton and Northampton have been awarded the same designation.
The Cultural District label “was kind of the impetus for us to expand on the Art Walk,” Crawley said. “It seemed like a good opportunity to look at ways we could do things differently … we could have poetry or music or dance, not just visual art.”
Her committee has also been talking to local restaurant owners about ways they might link their businesses to the monthly arts event and encourage people visiting downtown galleries to stay and eat dinner. “It could be offering a special appetizer that night, or a special dessert.”
Various ideas are still being discussed, such as having musicians playing in a designated area, and having an “art trolley” parked downtown where an artist could display his or her work or offer a workshop.
But Crawley said one new initiative is already underway. At a downtown block party Sept. 15, “Arts Night Plus” staff and volunteers invited people to decorate a “Tiny Canvas” — a 3-inch-by-4-inch card — with markers. More than 50 people took up the gambit, and those small works have since been fitted with frames.
All will be displayed in one of six downtown venues this Thursday at “Arts Night Plus,” and participants will be encouraged to do a “scavenger hunt” to locate their work, Crawley said.
“I think things like this will make [‘Arts Night Plus’] more of a community event,” she said, noting that parents, children and high school students alike had taken part in the “Tiny Canvas” project.
The original “Amherst Art Walk,” started in conjunction with the opening of Gallery A3, an artists’ cooperative on Amity Street, and added more venues over the years, though Galley A3 and a number of other places have served to anchor the event, including the Burnett Galley at Jones Library, the Public Art Commission space in Town Hall, Hope & Feathers Framing and Gallery and the Emily Dickinson Museum.
All told, some 17 locales, including restaurants like GoBerry and Bistro 63 at the Monkey Bar, are part of the event — as are art galleries and museums at Hampshire and Amherst colleges and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Crawley notes that one of her committee’s goals is to work more closely with the colleges to get students to visit downtown galleries, as well as to encourage more Amherst residents to check out the college art exhibits.
For Thursday’s “Arts Night Plus,” new exhibits will open at Gallery A3. Painter and mixed media artist Keith Hollingworth offers collages of portraits of African-Americans juxtaposed with other images, while painter Margaret Jean showcases studies of shadows cast by trees.
Crawley says her committee will also look to link future “Arts Night” tours to other town events, such as the “Merry Maple Celebration of Light” in early December. Her group is also looking for more volunteers, she noted, and anyone interested can contact her at amy@amycrawley.com or visit www.amherstartswalk.com for additional information.
Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.