Before every Gallery Night is Arts Goggle, a block party on the South Side, where I happened to find myself driving through last Friday when I spied dozens of people spilling out of the Art Station, a nonprofit organization that offers art therapy in a converted house on Park Place. I dropped in, and the people there were so damn generous and jovial, I wondered why I’d never “arts goggled” before. (What in the hell’s a “goggle,” anyway?) Kudos to the Art Station and also to the brand new Market 1612 on the same street, a complex that houses several small businesses, including a bistro, a designer cake studio, a catering company, and photography studio. All of the food was gone by the time I got there, which kind of sucked because the models there were making me hungry, but the vibe was magnifico. And “goggle” or not, getting to listen to Sheran Goodspeed Keyton, a Jubilee Theatre company member who was crooning outside the Market, was worth any senseless term you can sucker me into defining by my presence alone.
