Split SOS into multiple weekends?

[ron_newman]

I'm sure I'm not the only person who felt totally overwhelmed by this weekend's Somerville Open Studios, with over 340 artists at more than 100 separate locations. I made the following suggestion to several of the artists whom I visited, and they seemed sympathetic:

Draw an arbitrary line through the city. Everyone west of the line exhibits on SOS weekend #1. Everyone east of it exhibits on the following weekend. Or maybe even split the city (and the event) up into three successive weekends.

What do you all think?

Comments

[kjc.livejournal.com]

I would love to have an additional SOS event in the early fall.

I made a pretty serious effort this weekend, but only managed to see 27 studios (well over 30, maybe 40+ artists). And I was exhausted by the end of the weekend.

I would be happy with an arbitrary split or participation by whomever felt like participating in either.

I also think it would be fun if places like Ball Square, Davis Square, Porter Square, Union Square, Magoun Square, etc. each had an individual one-day event sometime during the summer.

I recognize that everything I've said is a helluva lot of organizing. Ultimately I'd like to see two official SOS events, 4-5 months apart (one spring, one early fall), and some area events, organized by the artists themselves and publicized through the SOS outlets, but with less of the organizational overhead (fancy printed maps, in particular).

I think the local businesses benefit from the influx of people wandering through their area and might be persuaded to pick up the costs of photocopying a one-sheet list of artists in a particular square for a smaller event.