New Artspace Caroline Collective Opens Tonight

Okay, so I just rechecked cool ex-Proletariat person Shawna’s initial post about this and saw it listing the party as being on Friday (i.e., last night), not today like I’d thought, and had a brief moment of panic…crap, did I miss another of these damn things?

Lucky for me/you, though, it turns out that tonight — Sat., June 7th — is actually the real-live Grand Opening party for H-town’s newest artspace, Caroline Collective. It’ll be at the Collective itself, naturally (4820 Caroline, in the Museum District), and will run from 7-10PM, with drinks (courtesy of St. Arnold’s & Tito’s Vodka), food (from chef David Grossman), music/beats, art, and whatever else that happens to be around.

The event’s apparently co-hosted by ArtStorm, and will kickoff an exhibit of collage art by a guy named Patrick Turk; and sadly, I know zero about either ArtStorm or Mr. Turk, although the one bit of his collages that’s up on the CC site looks kinda neat. (Sorry — despite being a music guy for many years, I’m still woefully uneducated when it comes to the badass local art scene…)

The Collective sounds pretty intriguing, from the descriptions I’ve seen… I’m told it’s “Houston’s first coworking venue,” but that’s somewhat of a mystifying description, at least to me. Going by what it says on the place’s About page, though, it sounds like the idea’s to create a place that’s both a workspace for artists, tech people, etc., and a cool social atmosphere:

A unique combination of private workspace, public art space, and open collaborative desk space, Caroline Collective provides a place where citizens can work in collaboration or privately, with a conference room and individual desks. Furniture, ample power outlets, secure broadband internet access and the general amenities of an office environment will be provided according to need.
…
Caroline Collective is more than collaborative work space. It’s also a collaborative meeting space. After hours, Caroline plays host to some of Houston’s regular technology happy hours and meet-ups which provide technologically minded people the opportunity to re-up their knowledge base or to provide their services to others who need technology consulting for their non-profit organizations.

Additionally, the space will host movie nights, book club meetings, non-profit events, seminars, salons, art openings, and product launches.

If I were a freelancer rather than an office-bound Company Man, heck, that’d sound pretty enticing to me — I think I need to forward it on to my freelance/work-at-home friends & see what they think…