UPCOMING EVENTS & WORKSHOPS

Mothers Day Brooch Craft
Free!
Date: Saturday, May 12th
Time: All Day!
Location: Paxton Gate's Curiosities for Kids, 766 Valencia Street

Come make mom a handmade brooch out of felt and vintage buttons this year for Mother's Day! We will have everything you need to make a custom design set up all day, so come in any time Saturday to get crafty.

Sidewalk Sale
Date: May 19th
Time: 11:00 am until sold out
Paxton Gate – 824 Valencia; Curiosities for Kids – 766 Valencia

Come out for the Valencia-wide Sidewalk Sale, where we'll feature heavily discounted merchandise and plenty of surprises. Find some sweet deals and soak up the spring sun with us!

Art Exhibition Opening - Scott Dupree
Date: Friday, April 13, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Paxton Gate's Curiosities For Kids
766 Valencia Street
Show runs April 11 – May 22, 2012

Paxton Gate's Curiosities for Kids is excited to announce the interactive opening reception for our latest art event by Atlanta-based artist Scott Dupree! Join us on Friday, April 13th, 6pm - 8pm to celebrate this lighthearted, one-of-a-kind show. In addition to all new artworks created just for the event, Scott will be bringing along his famed costumes and sculpture installations—life-sized replicas of his painted subjects which can be tried-on and worn by the attendees around our gallery space! This reception will be a memorable, can't-miss event!

More of Scott's work can be found at his website.

Scott Dupree: "My childhood was spent traveling across the United States with a nomadic family, briefly sampling diverse American cultures and the unique regional traditions of rural, urban, and oceanic communities. During my time living on our sailboat and inside our tiny Volkswagen, my world-view evolved as the front yard of my home continually shifted between the extremes of North America's geography. I only had a few toys and a dog to distract me from my sketchpads and pencils. The constantly shifting juxtapositions and combinations of American heritage provided me with a curiosity for the multitude of ways in which people have incorporated their backgrounds into their foregrounds. This mechanism of developing Americana combined with my own upbringing as a bi-product of formerly-French Southern confederates crossed with Polish/Jew immigrants act as the springboard for my current explorations into the American condition.

My art is painted still life theatre that critically examines the historical, social, and political conditions that define the 21st century. The entire world is experiencing a fundamental shift away from the previously accepted status quo that man can only be truly aware of and responsible for: his immediate environment. Tribes of people previously isolated from each other by mountains, oceans, and deserts are converging, and are faced with a choice between assimilation or isolationism. All around us the primitive and the modern clash, and like a giant lava lamp they swirl and combine to create a new social fabric. My paintings attempt to capture and bottle that swirl. A common theme of this body of work is the use of costumes as substitutes for a characters' interaction with their environment. Each of these people is a direct extension of the environment, which they created for themselves to illustrate their own personal social condition."

Art Exhibition - Hadley Northrop
Location: Paxton Gate’s Curiosities for Kids, 766 Valencia
Dates: May 23 – July 3

Come out to the latest in our series of art exhibitions at the gallery space in Paxton Gate's Curiosities for Kids. Featured this month: Hadley Northrop

From Hadley: "I paint the kind of people whose appearance catches my eye, places that look magical to me, and animals who are having a thoughtful moment. It wouldn't be possible without the rich colors and velvety texture of oil paint for capturing the warmth and mood of a place, and a photographic reference, no matter how poor quality, for capturing the more factual information. My influences are the painters of the 19th Century, music, San Francisco's Victorian architecture, and my seven years spent living in England.

This little fires series is based on the memory of a party I went to in Leeds, England a long time ago. It had bonfires burning in the back yard and then on down into the distance, seemingly into the woods behind the house and into the night - a place that for years afterwards I was unable to find again. I create and combine these scenes, fires and colors from memory, imagination and different sources.

When we were younger, my brother and mother told me about a polar bear in a zoo who you could watch through the glass in his underwater tank, and what an impression this astonishing sight had made on them. This stayed at the back of my mind until I started to really want a big polar bear swimming on the wall above me."

Sunday Streets Activities - Free!
Dates: Sundays in Summer
Location: Paxton Gate's Curiosities for Kids, 766 Valencia Street

Stop by during your stroll down Valencia Street for something a little different this year for Sunday Streets. Everything will be provided for the activities except the kids, so bring them out!

May 6th - Race Track

June 3rd - Balloon Animal Making

July 1st - Street Band Jam

August 5th - Table Tennis.