The new highlight of hump day is Building 3 on Golden Belt’s seven-acre campus. Back in the day, textiles were made here. Now it’s art, in 35 individual studios.

While the big “ta-da” for new exhibitions still takes place on third Friday’s, you can get a more intimate experience on First Wednesdays. Where Friday’s have people jostling for position holding plastic cups of Gallo, Wednesdays are just art.

Literally. The labyrinthine galleries were filled with artists doing their thing. They looked up and talked to you.

My first conversation was with steam-punk jeweler, Madelyn Smoak. We talked about her studio décor: parts of old fences brought indoors to house brass cicada rings and necklaces made of watch parts, old photos, and recycled miscellany.

Her cicada ring

She sells on Etsy under the name Mad Art.

Next was the studio of Michael Prim. “I’m painting Beethoven’s Sonatas,” he said. On a long strip of paper I could see the dives and leaps, lulls and crashes of a song outlined in black. “Coloring the sounds is next,” he said. I left thinking of what it would be like to have synaesthesia, when senses mix and you can hear colors, smell sounds and taste words.

At the Edge of Chaos, from Prim’s current Entering New Worlds collection

The main exhibit was mixed media and collage by Wendy Spitzer. She wasn’t there, but in her place a page from a vintage Brownie Handbook asked “How do you show your love?” and reminded me to “Do what grownups tell you too”, farther down a collage said only,  “experimental.”

Experimental?

As I walked out, an artist poked his head out of his studio and thanked me for coming. “I wish there were more of us here”, he said. “Next time.” Yes, next time.

First Wednesdays at the Golden Belt
11:00 a.m. to 4 p.m., Building 3
807 East Main Street in Durham