Nude Tin Can Gallery
125 Hatfield Rd,
St Albans
AL1 4JS
01727 569291
Hatty De Barnard was the first to be presented at the Copper House in July with the Muddy Stilettos award for her inspired, unsung miniature gallery selling innovative and original new art – across Herts & Bucks.
On the Hatfield Rd in Fleetville, StA, Nude Tin Can stands unabashed in a parade of shops with a fab café just as compact, two doors down at the corner. A parade indeed.
St Albans has always hoarded secrets, treasured places, not hidden but in open view. For the many-few who looked to ‘see’ – they were loved and taken to heart. The Verulam Arms in Lower Dagnall St, where from time to time in the 90s, Friday/Saturday nights and Summer Sunday afternoons would throng and ring to no-noise harmonies. That magical gated antiques yard in George St, still throngs and comes alive, and always open for best-breakfast the next morning. And who could forget Garibaldi’s… It was nestled into the neck of the far edge of the tricksy Clarence Park junction, at the start of the Living-Hatfield-Road.
Never too late, Garibaldi’s served the most exquisite home-Italian dishes set on shared formica tables, with a straight face, in a room no bigger than itself. Now gone, it still pulls at this heart.
I’ve always loved the scruffy beauty of StA’s Fleetville: a bustling pavement, a busy trafficky street reminding me of where, a thousand miles away, we ran as kids. At this perfectly formed Nude Tin Can you will find a white clean one-room gallery, with curved glass windows. Carefully uncluttered it is filled with fabulous, diverting works of art, life-size and tin-can tiny, created by artists local and international.
This page sketches a fraction of the picture.
This gallery is the other place in StA not-to-be-missed. It is here for the seeing, a glimpse of what we miss while looking the other way.
Sadly, we seem glazed to the unhurried beauty of things we miss in plain sight. This Nude Tin Can is to be found and opened – not missed.
So do and – don’t. (JH July 2019)
Judy Garland’s Dorothy as never before…
Rear Window below. Miniatures hiding against the wall
Full size mana/harle/quin with open-hearted miniatures