The Polk / TL Art Walk

The Lower Polk Art Walk wore a few names and styles. The constant: first Thursday, 15–20 galleries, framing shops, and café exhibits open to 10pm for a public night of art. Identity, wayfinding, web, photography, venue wrangling — community events are systems, not a one-off flyer.

Ran with Shell Thomas of the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development — immense effort for a two-person core. Across the years I shipped several websites and brands; frames below are the matured identity from the final period. Venue list, schedule, sponsorship, print, CMS, email, social all had to move together.

Today's stack for the monthly walk

Today the walk would run from one roster with a real schema: venue, address, hours, artist, medium, sponsor, accessibility notes. Everything printed and digital would be an output of that table. InDesign Data Merge would set the posters and the route map, a lightweight web map would plot the same rows, and a Mailchimp template and social cards would pull the same listings. When a gallery drops out on Thursday afternoon, it's a re-export, not a redraw.

The community side would run on a fixed monthly cadence: call for venues, confirm, print deadline, walk night, recap. Each step would have a template, so a two-person core team isn't rebuilding the month from memory. Claude would draft venue blurbs from each artist's own notes in the walk's voice, and a human would read every one before it went to print.

The identity work stays where it was: a mark and a wayfinding language strong enough to hold fifteen to twenty very different venues in one night. The system only takes the clerical work off the people who'd rather be out on the street.