Fresh art and a beer garden: just what Bend needs.Sean Anderson looks happily stressed. He moves around the gallery at PoetHouse Art checking on the sound equipment, the event staff, the guests and, through it all, his two young daughters. PoetHouse Art - a spot you've probably walked below and didn't even realize - is throwing a benefit for Rise Up, a non-profit that provides education and outreach to the poor in places like India, Nicaragua and China on this recent Thursday night, featuring local artists and musicians in their one-room studio and gallery.
PoetHouse Art began as an idea in the back of Anderson's mind as he and his wife attended a First Friday art walk in January and happened to stop in at the TBD Advertising on Bond Street and noticed the vacant loft space. Anderson, a graphic artist, says he had an idea for a combined gallery and studio art space, but had never come across an opportunity to do anything with it. After meeting with some friends who also expressed interest in a joint art studio/gallery, the group put in an offer to TBD for the space. According to Anderson, the space had been vacant for about a year and TBD had turned down requests from other businesses in the hopes that they could fill it with a more creative enterprise.
The room, with its open ceiling and exposed rafters, consists of a row of individual studios separated by a heavy-duty floor-to-ceiling canvas drop cloth. No two studios look alike. While one studio contains rows of brightly colored paintings, the next contains an array of old newspapers and pieces of wire while another has the floor covered with blankets and pillows because that particular artist prefers to work from the floor.
