Hangin' in the Richmond VA Arts District

It continues to amaze me how a city, like Winston-Salem, where I was living, or Richmond, Virginia, where I',m hanging at the moment, can have a really cool arts scene, but not have any good videos of it.  If you've got something cool, people, let the world know.  Blog, Instagram pics, You Tube videos, whatever.  Get the word out about your scene.  This video shows a bunch of the street art, and a few murals here.

I just found this video which shows some of the street art and murals here in Richmond, Virginia.  I kind of got stuck here last week, as I bailed from the Piedmont Triad of North Carolina, and headed towards Chicago.  I spent this last week earning some money by drawing this picture of Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin.

 I finished the drawing yesterday, and shipped it out.  I realized that I needed to sell one or two more of the finished drawings I have, as well, to pay for my bus ticket to the Chicago area. 

I planned to hit up some local record shops, to see if anyone was interested in buying a drawing.  But it took me longer than expected to find a post office, and I changed my plans.  I learned the other day that there's an arts district in downtown Richmond, centered around Broad Street.  So I took the (relatively) new Pulse bus down Broad, and parked my ass on a marble block next to the big statue of Maggie Lennard.  She was a pioneering black business woman, newspaper publisher, and all around bad ass lady of an earlier generation here. 

I wanted to hang for a while, check out the local arts scene, and see what the vibe was here, and see if anyone wanted one of my drawings.  So I held up the big Bob Dylan drawing in front of me, and waited for some response.  There actually weren't that many people walking around.  I expected it to be more crowded.  But eventually, people started walking by, and some commented on my drawing.  Most would say, "nice painting" from a distance.  When I told them it was done with Sharpie markers, they would walk right up to it to check it out.  I had some great conversations with a bunch of people, and a couple of people really wished they had some money to buy one of my drawings.  They gave me ideas on what to do to sell the pics locally today.  I gave people flyers to check out my other work.  So it was a good night all around.

I'm going to make the rounds today here in Richmond, and see if I can sell a drawing or two, and buy that bus ticket to Chicago and continue on my way.  But I really dig the mural and arts scene here, and I want to visit Richmond again when I have a little more money to get a decent place to stay, and time to wander around and check the city out more.