There's probably no bigger letdown for college grads who studied art and design than when they take their first 8-to-5 jobs, only to discover that their bosses won't pay them to play all day with new iPhone apps, which cuts into their ability to party all night with their fellow creatives.
But help appears to be on the way for those who find adulthood sucks. Five organizations in the metro Grand Rapids area have banded together to put the partyness back in the creative process, at least a few times a year.
The event is Nosh Night, which serves a more laudable purpose than just a fix for wanna-be-perpetual students. It's a way for creatives in several disciplines to share each other's work in a playful atmosphere -- the kind of milieu that generates the really great ideas.
“Myself personally, I really missed the college dormitory atmosphere that I got in art school, and that's what these nights are kind of aiming to be – a place that artists and art patrons can come and see what everyone else is up to,” says Jeffrey Meeuwsen, executive director of the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, a sponsor of the event.
A lot of creatives in the metro area share Meeuwsen's view, if the inaugural Nosh Night last week is any indication.
The June 11 “Slide Wars” event drew a crowd large enough to merit an announcement that the building had reached capacity of 300 people -- and that the bar was in need of replenishment. Established and amateur artists alike hob-knobbed their way through presentations by 20 individuals, each presenting 20 slides for 15 seconds per slide of their work, ranging from architecture, interior design, painting, furniture design and beyond.
The main purpose of Nosh Night is to explore the delicate line between design and art, as well as the symbiotic relationship of the two disciplines; the same set of curved lines that appeared in an oil painting appears in the frame of a chair – the spindly legs of a 100-legged table resemble the glittery eyelashes in a photographs of a burlesque dancer.
The list of sponsors underscores that overall purpose: the UICA, the Grand Valley chapter of the American Institute of Architects, Design West Michigan, Kendall College of Art and Design , the West Michigan chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Artists and Rapid Growth Media.
“When you get 300 creative people together, it's hard to not have good ideas come up,” Meeuwsen says.
Fresh from the success of the first Nosh Night, sponsors already have committed for a second, street party-themed instalment in August. In addition to formal sponsors, the event already has garnered a staggering backing from the community, particularly patrons and residents of the summer-long Artist Market on Division's Avenue for the Arts , which is exactly the point of Nosh Night.
Future of Nosh Nights will be built off of and designed around the evolving exhibitions and programming at UICA, which is scheduled to move into its new home on the corner of Fulton and Division next year. Presently, four nights are planned per year, making Nosh Night a seasonal celebration that's poised to draw a sizeable crowd from all over the West Michigan area.
If the typical art school dormitory is anything like Nosh Night, then those of us who have yet to pursue our plein air passions are surely missing out. At last week's function, there was a seemingly endless supply of mini quiches, chocolate mousse with shaved chocolate and whipped crème, and the bar – oh, the open bar. By the end of the three-hour event, the collection of empty Stella, Oberon, Cabernet and Zinfandel bottles would rival that of a Michigan State University fraternity during rush week.
Meeuwsen was correct in his predictions at the opening of the rapid-fire slide projector show that “the creative class will always show up for an open bar,” but he emphasized the underlying purpose of the event to draw together the creative class now employed in regular commercial work.
"Our demographic is much more diverse than it has been before, and more connected," Meeuwsen says. "To be able to offer a place for creative people working in a different field than they intended – people that have to work hard just to survive – it's a great thing, and a way for people to meet and network with a more diverse crowd.”
Instead of the quiet, museum-hush din that one finds at the normal artist reception, the gallery appropriately took advantage of the design of the building and created a stylized salon. A cluster of 50 people near the back continued to network using inside-the-bar volume voices sequestered behind a wall throughout the event.
The free-form nature that will be woven into subsequent nights is evident in Meeuwsen's final remarks before the first slide hit the screen at last week's event: “We're searching for ideas – and open to ideas,” he said, reiterating that spectators are welcome to voice their opinions. “[Nosh Nights] aren't about big heavy public lectures.”
Live DJs spun music during the intermission and following the show, making the atmosphere jovial and encouraging the key to the success of Nosh Night – audience participation. While introducing the first artist of the night, Brian Swem, assistant director of the Grand Valley AIA, noted with a grain of salt:
“Comments from the peanut gallery are totally okay with me – if the artists don't like it, that's their problem.”
Keleigh Wolf has written for Grand Rapids Magazine, Grand Rapids Family Magazine, and The Grand Rapids Business Journal since 2007. In 2008, a book of her poetry was published. She currently leads the art coverage for REVUE Magazine and freelances for Rapid Growth Media.
Photographs by Brian Kelly - All Rights Reserved
The talented team bringing you NoshNight
Photographer Brian Kelly of Rapid Growth Media presents his work (photo by Joshua Tyron)
An very large crowed takes in NoshNight/SlideWars (photo by Joshua Tyron)
Furniture designer Peter Jacob presents his work (photo by Joshua Tyron)