This post was edited on March 19 to correct the name of Eugene Sanchez.
Looking into the window of the Spyro Gyros Greek Bistro, 241 N. Queen St., on First Friday, I saw not only a belly dancer (who’ll be back for Music Friday in the 200 and 300 block of Queen Street this week) but paintings and photographs on the walls and a sign outside announcing “5 artists!” I stopped by a few days later to get a closer look, and asked owner Jacqueline Makris about the exhibits. “I have so much space, and there are so many artists,” owner Jacqueline Makris told me. She posted notices at PCA&D, which didn’t get much response, and started approaching people, which did. Photographer Melanie Danté helped her get the display together, which will continue through March.
In addition to Danté, whose urban imagery includes scenes of New York City, New Orleans, Philadelphia and Lancaster, on display are still-life and abstract collage and oil paintings by self-taught artist Adam Cowan; stark pen-and-ink drawings and some wood-burned panels by Bilal Salahudden (“Mr. Ink”); colorful flowers and island scenes (”impressionism to realism”) by another self-taught artist, Eugene Sanchez, the son of native Puerto Ricans; and biting, politically-charged collages by Kiersti Denovitz.
