Art and Liberty

Kristi Hand, artist and painter, is intent on "not taking herself too seriously" and having fun with her art, hoping that the audience has the same experience and willing them to read into her work whatever they might. Liberty Cafe on South Third Street in our DTR is a great place to go and have a cup of good coffee and see what the local art talent is doing. This month is a time go check out the audacious and bold fun and color Kristi Hand brings to the table.

Kristi had a time living in Hawaii and this reflects in this work featured above. The frame is also a work of art - handmade by the artist herself, rows and rows of gilded skulls with ruby eyes.

This series of work is a recently revisited group of work that Kristi started years ago and has now been reworked showing her accumulation of technique and her access to way better paints than a starving artist in her youth could buy. This is just a corner of the painting entitled "Virgin, Aliens and Spaceship". Love the gold space ship erupting from the canvas.

A view of the virgin on the same canvas.

This is a portion of the other painting in this Relics series (of which there are 4, the last of which is not yet finished yet) that features a pig, "Ham, Karma and Vin de Rose". The paintings were put away in the endeavor to paint for others, thinking commercial, thinking paying the rent, and now have come out to liberate the painter.


There are watercolors that are also a part of the artist's oeuvre and represented at the cafe. Kristi has two different sides to her work - some are very soft and fluid and pretty. The others are gutsy and bold and a wee bit crazy - which is good, at least that is what The Picaroon thinks - the crazier the better.

Liberty Cafe
926 S. Third Street
(425) 235 - 1400