Chop Suey!

Chop Suey Books will be hosting another Bizarre Market on October 30th. Chop Suey is a Richmond used-bookstore/gallery, with bargains galore. I recently bought the 1973 Whitney Biennial catalogue there, for something like $4.00. The 1973 Biennial was the first, and a lot's changed since then! A real surprise for me was seeing that recently retired VCU sculpture professor Lester Van Winkle had been included.

The Bizarre Market is a street market on the block behind Chop Suey, with people selling all kinds of stuff, including art. Last time I went I got one of Nicholas Kuszyk's cool t-shirts and a very strange little robot made by a guy named Eric Hall. It's reminiscent of a Star Wars action-figure, silver, about five inches tall, with articulated joints. Eric had about eight of these robots, male and female, that he had cobbled together from other plastic toys, putty, and I don't know what else. Looking at the robot now it's hard to figure out what the individual pieces are. Eric said he was making these robots as a hobby, and when I asked for contact info he wrote "toy guy" in parenthesis after his name, so I'm not even sure if he considers them art. Don't know if he'll be at the upcoming market, but that's the kind of stuff you can expect to find. I've got his phone number if anyone wants it. Oh yeah, the price. It was only $15.00!

This time the market is being held to help benefit Art 180, a group working to provide art related programs to Richmond youth.