The Charles Street artist market was set up in the carpark of the Sporting Club carpark in Brunswick. There were paintings hanging on the fence but I’d seen the best of them two years ago at the Yard in 696. There were stalls around the edge of the carpark and people were painting on easels in the middle. The paintings were mostly awful amateur efforts. There were also painting activities for children for a gold coin donation that were proving popular. The dozen or so stalls were a mix of more painting, craft, new age craft and two excellent wooden furniture makers. One of the furniture makers, Benjamin Hitchings Designs, also had elegantly spiky wood and clay objets-d’art.
Well-known Melbourne-based, street artist, Drew Funk was spray-painting a scene on the side of shipping container as a guy plays acoustic blues guitar. The usual scene of angular Chinese style trees along with a turtle and birds was emerging as Drew casually sprayed, chatted, cleaned the nozzle of his spray-can and sprayed some more. Drew Funk is a hard working artist – is there a bar in Melbourne that doesn’t have a wall painted by Drew Funk? I’ve asked this rhetorical question before and I soon had the answer as in the Sporting Club’s beer garden there is a large aerosol mural by Yowza. Yowza’s intense scene has a ruined temple, lots of lush vegetation and strange mutant Pliocene creatures.
I sat in the beer garden writing up my notes and drinking pear cider. I’ve never had pear cider before. It was smooth and refreshing compared to an apple cider that I expect to have a crisp dry finish. What should I expect from pear cider? What am I expecting from a small artist’s market? I wasn’t expecting much from either. The weather was beautiful; the sun shone and a cool breeze caressed the skin. It was good to see what was happening in Brunswick on a summer Sunday afternoon.
Black Mark 