Why I Art Walk

I love to walk. I lived in San Francisco, without a car for seven years.  Before that, I lived car-less in downtown Chicago. I can attest to the enriching and gratifying experience a simple walk offers. My love of walking is one of the reasons I so much enjoy Kirkland’s Artwalk, which occurs next Friday, June 10, from 4:00 pm to 9:00 pm, and every month thereafter on the second Friday. 

The health benefits of walking are apparent: a slimmer waist, stronger legs, and a diabetes prevention plan to name a few.  Of even greater value, however, are the psychological benefits gained from walking.  Studies show that people who walk more than others report higher energy levels, greater self-esteem, and happier moods.  It’s easy to understand why:  Walking forces a person to engage his or her environment and thus promotes a sense of personal connection. It is a grounding experience. But walking can mean much more.

As David McCullough observes in his new book The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, the Parisians understand the importance of walking.  Flâneur is a French term given meaning by the poet and art critic Charles Baudelaire, which denotes a person who walks a city to experience the city’s unique artistic qualities.  A flâneur is more than a person who merely takes a stroll or walks for transportation.  A flâneur is one who walks as a deliberate exercise of indulging the distinctive culture of a city’s environment.  It is a person who is enriched through walking. 

A similar term, dérive, also owes its genesis to French culture, specifically a group of avant-garde artists living in Paris.  It means an unplanned journey typically taken through an urban landscape, and it is used to explain theories of pyschogeography, which is the study of the psychological effects of a geographical environment. 

As the father of dérive Guy Debord wrote in his 1958 piece Theory of the Dérive: “In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their relations, their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there…”  A dérive is, in essence, a journey of artistic discovery. 

Artwalk too can be a journey of artistic discovery.  Artwalk is a free self-guided walking tour through downtown Kirkland’s art galleries and past its public art displays.  What I love about Kirkland’s Artwalk is that it highlights not only the city’s distinctive artistic elements, but also emphasizes (and capitalizes on) the unique walking qualities offered by the city.

Indeed, Kirkland is a uniquely walkable city.  And by “walkable” of course, I do not mean simply that it is flat.  Rather, Kirkland’s central downtown, its expansive waterfront pathways and convenient urban parks, are prime urban landscapes for stretching your legs.  Not every city can boast these characteristics.  

Friday’s Artwalk in downtown Kirkland presents an excellent opportunity for us all to walk with purpose.  It is a chance to walk with artistic intent and in the process become enriched by Kirkland’s cultural qualities. 

A walk represents the realized promise of a uniquely human experience that a person obtains through a total immersion in the city’s landscape.  It is, in many ways, its own art form and the walkers are its artists.