Imagine a place in town where you could find every local artists' wares for purchase in the one place. It sounds like a tourist's dream, not to mention a handy thing to have for locals in the lead-up to Christmas.
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The one-stop pop-up art shop is a vision of Hank Spirek - a local artist himself who thinks Orange's current options for seeing and potentially buying local art are pretty slim.
"It isn't easy for artists in Orange to get exhibition space," Mr Spirek said.
"I saw the empty shops on Summer St and in other locations and the concept of having pop-up exhibitions in those empty spaces seemed like a good idea."
He had noted that artists in Newcastle had had some success with getting the "pop-up" shop/exhibition off the ground and thought it could be similarly implemented here.
After floating the idea before Orange City Council as well as Mayor Reg Kidd, Mr Spirek approached all the art groups he knew of and found nothing but enthusiasm.
"I'm talking somewhere around 100 artists are also looking for space to exhibit," he said.
"I'd like to get it going by December, (before) Christmas. If we can work together with council and with the owners of the stores, we envision this happening on a regular basis as well as during the festival periods.
"Council seems supportive of this concept and they have some ideas of their own. Maybe for exhibitions in the parks during some of these festivals. They also raised the possibility of securing a store-front for a year to see if we could get artist to exhibit there."
He added that he'd found it odd how easy it was to exhibit in places like Bowral and Sydney but not in his own hometown.
"There's maybe two or three places in Orange but they're expensive. You have to pay for the space. It's not easy," he said.
Whereas in Bowral, where Mr Spirek had recently exhibited, there seemed to be more of a "willingness to take on different artists".
"The problem is getting businesses to allow us to use the space.
"We've got artists who are willing to exhibit and we've got the screens that are necessary to display the work... now we just need the (space)."
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