It was a busy night at Seymour Place, 201 East Main St., Batavia, on Thursday night with GO Art! hosting two art show openings and a Celebrity Bartender Challenge.
In the challenge, Lauren Humphrey and Mandy Humphrey faced off in a tip-fund raiser for the arts council.
Artists Adrian Morris and Rita Mallison opened, for each of them, their first solo exhibitions.
Morris, above, is originally from Ireland. He married a gal from Stafford (they're now divorced) and moved to Genesee County about a decade ago. He said he's been painting and drawing all of his life and enjoys his membership with GO Art because being part of the local community of artists is like being with a family (his family is all in Ireland, and he may return there at some point, he said, because his mother is getting older).
"I love the supportive nature," Morris said. "It gets me out of the house and I meet a lot of other artists and we socialize and network here."
He has given art demos at Seymour Place, most recently a pallette knife demonstration in which he produced an Irish landscape painting.
He specializes in landscapes and portraits and said he's done numerous portraits on commission for local residents and is available for more portrait commission work.
There is another Celebrity Bartender Challenge at GO Art! tonight featuring Rebekah Ireland vs. Ryan Duffy starting at 6 p.m.
Rita Mallison, a long-time Batavia resident, started painting just a few years ago. She specializes in portraits of nuns, priests, saints, and religious heroes. She took up the subject after her conversion to Catholicism but said she has long been fascinated by nuns and wanted to be a nun when she was a little girl. She said she could never afford to buy paintings sho she keeps the prices of her paintings low.
In the main gallery is a show of work by William Mathews, which opened previously.
