The Blueprint Art Gallery celebrates their first year at Blueprint Records as of Arts Days 2011, Sept. 30-Oct. 1.
 Word is slowly spreading about this new little gallery.

“Sometimes people, look up from the records. But some come in just to see the works,” said curator Mike Maguire, examining the latest exhibition “Invasion” by artist Bonnie Patton, which has been up since May 31 and will continue until Arts Days when a new exhibit will open.

 It is an exception to the rule as  instead of music themed exhibits, this one features a variety of different synonyms for the word “invasion” written on the walls of Blueprint’s vinyl room.

“She brought out the thesaurus and looked up words for “invasion” and used an overhead  projector from a school to display them on the wall,” Maguire observed.

“It’s not a music based exhibit.”

He went with “Invasion” for a couple of reasons — he liked the concept and the walls needed to be repainted and repaired after the previous exhibits.
“We had to fill in a bunch of holes and repaint it anyways, so we decided to actually paint this one on the walls,” he said.

 The gallery has had four exhibits since they opened last year including two individual exhibits and two group exhibits. In addition to Bonnie Patton’s  show, they have also had an exhibit of Chad Patterson’s paintings;  a group show featuring artistic renderings record album covers called “Spin” and their first one was a display of concert photos including works from numerous local photographers.

“‘Spin’ got a lot of response,” he said.
“But the individual exhibits have been the most popular,” he said.

The next exhibit will be related to Trap\Door Artists Run Centre sixth annual Gushul residency in Blairmore, taking place in early September. A group of local artists (only one has signed up so far) will be taking a road trip to Blairmore for the residency where they will be vcreating art. Some of the works resulting from the residency will be displayed at the Blueprint Gallery.
“We’re going to do another open call. We’d love to have new artists involved,” he said.

 While the response to call outs has been disappointing, Maguire believes things will only get better as word spreads about the gallery.
“ The idea is to get people who would not particularly be interested in going to an art gallery. That’s what I like about this place,” he said.
“I just like to showcase local talent,” he said.

They are still working on their online presence, so for more information about the gallery and upcoming exhibits , contact Maguire at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it