BUCKHANNON – The Blaxxmith Shop and the Infamous Art Collective will present the fine art exhibit ‘Mama Always said,’ this Saturday.
Tim Hibbs, the proprietor of the Blaxxmith Shop, said the exhibit will kick off at 6 p.m. at the Infamous Art Gallery, 38 Main Street in Buckhannon. The event is free and will feature food, music and plenty of art.
“The theme of this one is, ‘Mama Always Said,’ which is a look into the different superstitions and wives tales that you heard your mom saying back when you were growing up,” Hibbs told My Buckhannon. “There’s a lot of weird Appalachian sayings around, so we just wanted to explore that as a collective.”
The show will feature works from across the collective and not focus on one medium.
“We have writers, we have musicians, we have our open mic,” Hibbs said. “We have had people reading short essays or poetry, along with different people writing songs and performing those. We have a vintage recording studio in the back, that’s reel-to-reel. There is some digital equipment too, but mostly it’s old stuff, so if we’re having an open mic, we’re recording what’s going on.”
A local bluegrass outfit, the Snatchburg Boys, will also make an appearance Saturday.
“We’ve set up a stage in the gallery because we wanted to bring music into what we’re doing,” Hibbs said. “Not everybody paints, but there are a lot of people who are creative and we want to give them a place here.”
Hibbs started utilizing the building next to the Blaxxmith Shop as the Infamous Art Gallery because the collective needed more space.
“After a year-and-a-half into the pandemic, everybody was getting pretty bad cabin fever and getting burned out. I thought I could give some of my friends an outlet, so that’s what I did with this space,” Hibbs said. “Then it grew too big for this space, because we were having shows here and we couldn’t fit everybody. We had people on the sidewalk, and it just didn’t work.”
The overall goal of the Infamous Art Collective is not to sell art, but to appreciate it.
“We want people to feel welcome to come down and participate, but more importantly, to come down and just take it in and understand that we’re not trying to sell people art,” Hibbs said. “A lot of the art is available for sale, but what we really want to do is just provide a place for people in the community to come depressurize, look at the art and listen to some music.”
The group has participants from around the state, but Hibbs hopes more artists from Buckhannon and Upshur County will reach out.
“This is an art community we’re building,” Hibbs said. “We have artists from five or six different counties, like Randolph, Upshur, Lewis, Braxton and Gilmer and Harrison. When we first started, I had a desire to have it be more Buckhannon-related, but unfortunately, as of yet, we haven’t had a lot of people from Upshur County. We’d love to see more people from this area getting involved.”
Learn more about the Infamous Art Collective on their website and follow the Blaxxmith Shop on Facebook.
