My First Myrtle Beach ArtWalk

Since moving to the Myrtle Beach area 10 months ago, I’ve gotten to know quite a bit of the local music scene, but there are still whole parts of the area’s creative community that I’m only beginning to discover. One of those is the visual arts community in downtown Myrtle Beach.

Last week I had an opportunity to experience it firsthand when I played solo Latin jazz guitar for the First Friday ArtWalk at William H. Miller Studios & Fine Art. I went into the evening grateful for the opportunity but with very little idea of what to expect. Three hours later, I left with a much greater appreciation for both the ArtWalk and what is developing in this part of downtown Myrtle Beach.

The Myrtle Beach First Friday ArtWalk

The F1rst Friday ArtWalk takes place throughout downtown Myrtle Beach on the first Friday of each month. Rather than being centered in one building, local galleries and businesses open their doors to artists, musicians and performers, giving visitors the opportunity to make their own way through the downtown area. Restaurants participate as well, and the current ArtWalk format includes a free trolley connecting many of the participating locations.

I particularly like the concept because it isn’t simply an art exhibition. It creates an evening around art. You can walk into a gallery, hear music somewhere else, have dinner, encounter another artist down the street and perhaps discover a business or part of downtown you hadn’t known was there.

The ArtWalk also has deeper roots than I realized. It was launched in 2017 by photographer Carl Kerridge and artist William H. Miller as an effort to unify and promote the arts in downtown Myrtle Beach. At the time, the area contained five galleries and a frame shop. William H. Miller Studios has continued hosting First Friday receptions as the event has developed around it.  That history made the location of my first ArtWalk especially appropriate.

William H. Miller Studio

William “Billy” Miller has been involved in building artistic communities long before coming to Myrtle Beach. He studied fine art before graduating from Parsons School of Design in New York in 1983, then spent years working in computer graphics, graphic design, art direction and marketing while continuing to develop his own art. In 2007 he opened a studio at Winter Street Studios in Houston and became active in that city’s arts community.

In 2014, Houston’s mayor issued a proclamation recognizing June 30 as William H. Miller Day in acknowledgement of his contributions to the Houston arts scene. He relocated to Myrtle Beach around the end of that year and opened his Myrtle Beach studio/gallery in 2015. He subsequently became involved with local arts organizations and the City of Myrtle Beach Cultural & Art Committee and helped establish the First Friday ArtWalk.

What I find especially interesting about William H. Miller Studios & Fine Art is that it isn’t simply a gallery filled with Billy Miller’s own work. It also provides a platform for other artists.  The gallery regularly organizes group exhibitions and invites artists working in drawing, painting, photography, mixed media, sculpture, glass, fiber and other mediums to participate. The studio has also experimented with ways of bringing artistic disciplines together. One project, “Your Story Matters,” partnered the gallery with neighboring Long Bay Theatre. Writers submitted stories, visual artists created works inspired by them, and actors recorded narrations so visitors could experience the literary, visual and performing arts together.  That kind of cross-pollination seems very much in the spirit of the ArtWalk itself.

The Miller gallery is at 702 8th Avenue North. The gallery is relatively small, but one of my first impressions was how much art it contained without feeling cramped. It was well lit and inviting, and everywhere I looked there was something different to take in.  There was also a tremendous range of styles. Some of the work was quite realistic, while other pieces moved all the way into abstraction. That variety made the room interesting to walk through because there wasn’t one particular aesthetic being imposed on everything.

One of my favorite pieces happened to be a huge, vibrant abstract painting by Billy behind his desk. It immediately caught my eye. His own work combines his background in traditional fine art with decades of experience in digital technology, photography and graphic design, and he describes his approach to abstraction as a way of communicating ideas and emotions while leaving room for viewers to bring their own experience to what they’re seeing.

Billy greeted me warmly when I arrived and made sure I was comfortable and had what I needed. My wife came along and took a little video during the evening, and the gallery also had wine and sandwiches available. It felt less like walking into a hushed museum and more like being welcomed into a creative gathering place.

And people kept coming.  For most of the three hours that I was there, the gallery had a steady flow of visitors. What struck me was the variety of people. There were young people and older people, locals and tourists, artists, families and people who seemed simply to be browsing and enjoying the evening.

I even saw at least one piece of art sell while I was there, which was nice to witness. It’s one thing to talk abstractly about “supporting local artists.” It’s another to watch someone encounter a piece of art, value it enough to purchase it, and know that an artist’s work is now going home with someone.

Music in a Gallery

My role for the evening was to play solo Latin jazz guitar. I deliberately kept the volume moderate because I didn’t want the music to dominate the room. My hope was that it would enhance the experience of looking at the artwork rather than compete with it.

It ended up feeling like a very natural fit; here is a short excerpt.

I’m so accustomed to performing in restaurants and bars that I’m used to the constant background of conversations, dishes, televisions and everything else happening around the music. In those environments, you’re not always sure how much people are actually hearing, even when they’re enjoying themselves.

A gallery is different.  People are already paying attention. They’re looking carefully at shapes, colors and textures and moving through the room at their own pace. Even if they aren’t specifically standing in front of the guitarist listening to every note, the music becomes part of that experience.

Several people told me that they enjoyed it. Others gave me a smile or a thumbs-up while they walked past, and some put money in the tip hat. One gentleman even announced that he wanted me to play at his wedding. I’m not sure how serious he was — I don’t remember seeing him take a business card — but I appreciated the enthusiasm!

For me, the musical side of the evening was satisfying for another reason. I’ve recently been working on my time feel when playing Afro-Cuban music. When you’re trying to create the excitement of that music on one guitar, there’s a temptation to push too hard, and in my case that can sometimes translate into rushing.

That night I didn’t feel the need to prove anything. I settled into the grooves, stayed relaxed and got into the zone. It wasn’t particularly flashy, but it felt good. In a room filled with visual art, that seemed like exactly the right approach.

Discovering Downtown Myrtle Beach

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the evening was realizing how little I knew about this side of downtown Myrtle Beach.

Most of my previous visits to this area have been connected with music or business. I’ve performed at Boteco and participated in the local jazz jam there, and I’ve been to eMYRge for a couple of business meetings. With the construction and redevelopment presently taking place downtown, however, I hadn’t really thought of the area as somewhere I would go specifically to discover art.

The ArtWalk expanded my horizons.  The Arts & Innovation District surrounding the ArtWalk isn’t accidental. Myrtle Beach has been pursuing a long-term effort to turn the traditional downtown core into a walkable, mixed-use district centered on artistic, cultural and civic life. The city’s plans call for public spaces, historic-building redevelopment, arts organizations, businesses, restaurants, entertainment and other uses to coexist within the district.

And that transformation is still very much in progress. New galleries and businesses have continued opening, and the area is increasingly being promoted as Myrtle Beach’s creative downtown district rather than merely an extension of the tourist attractions closer to the ocean.  I got just enough of a taste of that during the evening to want to see more.

At one point I could hear another band playing somewhere down the street. They sounded good, and I thought about going to listen for a while after I finished. Once I got in my car, however, I couldn’t quite figure out where they were, the best way to get there or where I would park.  Next time I would like to do it differently: park the car, actually do the ArtWalk myself and explore.

A Reminder About Being an Artist

There was one more unexpected takeaway from the evening.  The gentleman who mentioned hiring me for his wedding referred to me as an “artist.” Strangely enough, despite having spent most of my life making music, that’s not a word I commonly use to describe myself.  On the drive home, I started listening to tracks from some of my own albums, including Sketches, What Are the Odds? and Digital Interfaith. Some of that music is fairly adventurous rhythmically and certainly wasn’t created by asking what would be easiest to market or sell.

It reminded me that making art has value in itself.  Like a lot of working musicians, I spend a tremendous amount of time thinking about the business side of what I do: booking gigs, teaching, marketing, websites, promotion, finances and all the practical things required to make a living in music. Those things are necessary, but they can also make time spent simply creating music begin to look like an indulgence — or even, from the strict point of view of the business mind, a waste of time.

Spending an evening surrounded by paintings, sculptures and other work that people had taken the time to imagine and create was a nice reminder that it isn’t.

Significance of the ArtWalk

That’s ultimately what I enjoyed most about my first Myrtle Beach ArtWalk. It brought together a lot of different forms of creativity without requiring any of them to be the entire focus of the evening.  The paintings didn’t have to compete with the music. The music didn’t have to become a concert. People could talk, eat, drink a glass of wine, encounter artists, discover something they liked and then continue down the street to see what was happening somewhere else.  That kind of environment is how an arts community begins to feel like a community rather than simply a collection of individual artists working separately.

It is also what makes William H. Miller Studios an especially interesting part of the story. Billy’s involvement goes back to the beginnings of the Myrtle Beach First Friday ArtWalk, and his gallery continues to provide exhibition opportunities for a wide range of artists while sitting in the middle of a downtown district that is itself still being created.

I arrived that evening simply grateful to have been asked to participate.  I left feeling that I had discovered another side of Myrtle Beach.  And next time, whether I’m carrying my guitar or not, I’d like to explore more of it.