Seattle officials are planning to crack down on the unofficial open-air art market along Occidental Avenue during the Pioneer Square First Thursday art walks. They’re talking with gallery owners and official neighborhood booster groups, but apparently not with the outdoor art vendors themselves (except to give ’em stern warnings not to come back in July without a permit).

The SeaTimes quoted gallery owner Greg Kucera as saying the unauthorized, un-curated, un-mediated art sales on the sidewalks “erases the work we’re trying to do” as per “trying to get people to understand the difference between good art, bad art, high art, low art.”

If you ask me, erasing such hierarchical boundaries is a Good Thing. We oughta encourage more of it.

If the street art’s popularity is overcrowding Occidental, then expand it into Occidental Park across the street. But don’t have screening committees or “quality control” bureaucrats deciding who gets to sell what. We don’t need another exclusive spot that only offers the same slicked-up, blanded-down, tourist-friendly “fine” art you can already find at every summertime street fair.

That mellow-but-meaningless image, of course, is precisely what’s caused so many hipster critics and scenesters to scoff at Seattle’s most commercial contribution to the art world, glass art. This week’s international Glass Art Society convention here in town, and all the associated local gallery shows, might be changing a few minds about this. COCA and Roq La Rue have found plenty of pieces to display that show typical COCA and Roq La Rue subject matter, only in glass. The pliable, moldable, clear or semi-opaque material can be utilized for a lot more than just prosaic giant bowls.

In other words, glass artists don’t always blow.