Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Key West - Wyland Art Gallery

Oldest house gardens right off Duval Street
We recovered from our colds enough for a walk down Duval street and we got as far as the Wyland Art Gallery. It's a great place to look around. There are sculptors of  dolphins, octupi, and other creatures of the sea in amazing detail. There are also glass sculptors of what appears to be waves frozen in time, very beautiful by David Wight. After being mesmerized by the paintings and sculptors, we moved on up Duval.

Frozen wave by David Wight
Next we went in Key West Gallery at 601 Duval Street. It had the finest of the art we've seen in Key West. In particular they exhibited paintings by Alexei Butirskiy from Russia. When we were admiring one of his paintings, the gallery owner took it off the wall and stood it in a darken room in back. As she slowly dimmed the lights, the painting came alive. It was an evening scene and he had put lights in the windows in the painting and when dimmed, the lights seems to glow out of proportion to their brightness in the painting. It was as if the yellow used for the lights was luminescent - but it was not, it was just the effect of the contrast between the lights in the painting and the darker shades used for the rest of the painting, very beautiful effect. She said his paintings typically go for $100k or more. We replied that it was very nice but we would hold off for now...

Jimmy Buffett's place











One of the oldest houses in Key West was moved to Duval Street and it open to the public we visited the gardens and rested a bit. It was moved to higher ground due to high tides (global warming?) around 1900. Having just recoved from a bad cold, we decided not to press our luck and returned to the boat and watch the boat traffic go by, relaxing. Oh yes, we did walk by Jimmy Buffett's place but didn't go in, very crowded.

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