While walking around the Union Depot area of downtown El Paso this weekend, I captured a few shots of some of the more interesting buildings around the area. Have a look:

More pics can be found here: Union Depot/Art Market on flickr

On Sunday I headed out to Chalk the Block 2013 to get the boys out of the house for a few hours.  Because of the construction in San Jacinto Plaza, the event was moved from the park to the area outside the Convention Center and down the way on Franklin street by the Museum of History.

There were also a bunch of pop-up galleries open for the event and from where we parked we were able to view a few along our walk.

Despite the disjointed nature, due to the construction, it was well attended and there was plenty of great works on display:

As we wound our way around, we were able to view some of the new artistic fencing that replaces the old chain link over the railroad bridges. The El Paso Public Art Program commissioned different artists to create replacement fencing, adding some much needed character to the bridges where the railroad snakes under downtown.

As in the past, the event is also host to lots of alternative art performances and kinetic sculptures by artists from around the USA.  You can really spend the whole day and night with musical performances and local food trucks keeping your body and mind fed.  After a couple of hours it was time for us to fly home:

Chalk the Block 2013 on Flickr

A while back it was decided to let the Muir building get razed since it was considered “non contributing” and deemed to expensive to restore by the owner.  The general gist was that the modifications by the various tenants over the years had removed much of what made it historic. In its last role as a Payless Shoe Store it did look that way.

You can debate that all day long but until you start taking down walls, you don’t really know.   There’s a good pic taken by Jim Tolbert at the elpasonaturally blog that shows how much was really left under the facade.  Now I’m no engineer, but it looks like there was quite a bit of the original building left that could have been worked with:

Buildings come and buildings go.  It’s a tough decision and if the money isn’t there or if its not financially feasible to the owner what are you going to do?  You would hope the need to preserve the past would trump the pocketbook but its rare when that actually happens.

I drove by the spot were the Muir sat and if there’s a small silver lining to all of this, its what was hidden behind it:

Its a pretty nifty look at some old building signage that I would guess predates the Muir’s construction. I hope it doesn’t get immediately painted over in favor of white so that the future patrons of this, soon to be parking lot spot, will get to see some history.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted any works in progress. The last couple of months have been kind of crazy with going to Houston and getting a few of my paintings ready and delivered to the airport and city of El Paso.  Oh and there was a job change in there as well.  This is an idea I’ve had for a while so i’m glad to finally get it going.

I was honored to have been selected as a finalist for the 2013 Hunting Art Prize.  My piece “All Tapped out in El Paso” was one of 1600 pieces from around Texas entered. The 3 jurors whittled it down to 109 finalists of which one is selected for the $50,000 prize.  Hunting PLC also matches the prize amount and a total of the sales to a charity, last year the amount was well over $100,000.

This was my first time at the Gala and it was a interesting event.  One of the highlights was meeting fellow El Paso artist Alexandra McGovern, whose entry was next to mine.

The event was well attended, giving the artists lots of visibility and plenty of networking opportunities.  I had lots of interest in my piece, quite possibly due to having my own personal Vanna White:

Virginia and I had a blast and I will definitively continue to enter, who knows I might sell next time!

All Tapped out in El Paso Houston

More pics from the event here: Hunting Art Prize 2013