For X4, I had originally intended to go with the informational interview option and try to find somebody in the multimedia or art field to interview, but as time became less and less and I wasn’t able to find someone I decided to change my mind and attend one of the events listed for the assignment. The event that I chose was the Last Friday Art Walk in Eugene. Neither my brother or I had really been to the Whiteaker area in Eugene (even though we had heard of it’s infamousness) so we thought it would be interesting to go check it out!

The drive over was interesting in and of itself because we left at about 5:30 and had to drive through Eugene right in the middle of rush hour so the traffic was insane, plus we didn’t know exactly where to go or what to expect. Once we got to the Whiteaker area we found a spot to park on Blair Blvd. and started walking down the street past the various shops and restaurants. I was kind of surprised that it didn’t seem like there was a lot going on at least on Blair Blvd. so we turned around and walked back up and took Van Buren Street. There was a little more to see on Van Buren. We stopped for a while at the very beginning of the street to examine a cool sculpture of 4 figures standing in a group. The sculpture was a mosaic crafted out of shards of glass and clay. The longer you looked at it the more it seemed you discovered. There were several smaller objects embedded in each figure that created scenes in the sculpture itself so it was like an image within an image!

Standing next to the sculpture on Van Buren St.

Continuing on, we walked a little further until we came to the Ninkasi Brewing Company and stopped to take some pictures. We didn’t go inside but had a fairly good view of the factory and equipment looking through the window. Our last stop was a Tattoo parlor where there was a guy twirling a fire baton. It was hard to get a very good picture because we were on the opposite side of the street and there was a lot of traffic.

Gate outside Ninkasi Brewing  Company.

Flame Dancing outside of Tattoo Parlor on Van Buren St.

This pretty much concluded our little adventure. We got back to where we parked which was outside of “Papa’s Soul Food” restaurant. We had planned on going in and eating but it was jam-packed as were many of the other restaurants in the area so we decided to go eat at Buffalo Wild Wings in Springfield instead.

Overall I thought the experience was interesting! Even though we didn’t stay a long time and see a lot, it was cool to get the opportunity to explore an area of Eugene I had never really been to before. I think if I was to do it again I would try going inside a few more places and hit a few more streets because I don’t think we covered the entire area that it was going on.