Last night was the first official Art Walk in Cuenca. We had these in California when we lived there, and it was always interesting to browse through the artist’s open studios.  The California ones were open to any artist that wished to participate, and frankly some of the art was not very good…

This Cuenca Art Walk was a very pleasant surprise in contrast.  The art ranged from good to excellent, and showed just what a range of fantastic artists exist in Cuenca (plus some surrounding communities, where some artists drove in from).  The only disappointment was that all 40 venues were only open for 3 hours, from 5PM until 8PM.  There was so much to see that it was impossible to visit them all in that amount of time.

We only visited half the 40 locations ourselves, because of the restricted time.  I am only showing a tiny portion of a very few of my favorite pieces in this blog. With over 500 photos taken between a friend (David Owen) and ourselves that night, this would be a record setting blog entry if I attempted to show a larger sampling.

If you would like a copy of the full catalog, listing all the venues and artists, you can download it here.

Most exhibits were attended by the artist, so we had a chance to talk (albeit briefly, because of the number of spaces to cover) with many of them.  One artist was unable to attend in person, so he had his partner represent him, while he attended via Skype (lower middle image above).

As we were walking between studios, these mimes approached us, asking for a donation for a local orphanage. This is a fairly common activity for High School kids to reach out and do community service, while practicing their theater skills.  We gave a small donation, and they were eager to pose for our cameras.