We've picked up on why, if there's a street with an art gallery or two, there's an art walk to go on it. In these lean financial times, the bored, broke average Joe -- or the cool you -- gets an hour or two of free entertainment and maybe a few free drinks in cheap plastic cups. It's hard to resist -- it gets people out to the galleries. Las Olas Boulevard, for example, is full of slick, polished galleries hung with ponderously expensive paintings and filled with indecipherable sculptures that always seem to end up being a woman's body swirled around something. But the artwalk through the FAT Village Arts District the last Saturday of every month from 7 to 11 p.m. is not your mom's artwalk. FAT Village is, for lack of a better word, grittier than the one on Las Olas. Many of the "galleries" are actually the artists' tiny workshops, where they sweat and dream and create. The use of spray paint as a medium is liberal, and the photos are often disturbing and edgy. The prop warehouse seems haunted with the ghosts of dramas past. And there's no well-lit, manicured strip of boutiques down which to glide. Instead, the walk weaves in and out of the art enclave near NW First Avenue and NW Fifth Street in Fort Lauderdale. It's an experience that will put you in touch with the local burgeoning art community in the very spaces where they create. The next FAT Village Art Walk is this Saturday. Visit fatvillagearts.com for more info and to download a printable map.
Sat., Aug. 27, 7 p.m., 2011