First Friday Artwalk

February 6th, 2009

Well, this First Friday started out at 1708.

The pieces at 1708 at the time are from Nichole Maury and Christopher Quirk. The pieces were quite different, but seemed to fit together nicely in the space.

Christopher Quirk's pieces were gory looking pieces. They were mostly gray, tilted canvases with built up oil and acrylic paint that was mostly in bodily colored tones (peach, red, purple). They were relatively large pieces which was a nice contrast to the long walls in the gallery and the smaller pieces by Nichole Maury.

( That's Amber... )

Nichole Maury's work was all similar to the piece on the right. Most of them were made up of screenprints and carbon transfer's with some sort of array of little geometric shapes (sometimes circles and sometimes rectangles.) My favorite piece of hers was "An Array of Plausible Perspectives #10" where there were three pieces similar to this one >
but they seemed to form a continuous wave of boxes over three separate works.

Next stop for the group was Quirk. I never understood what people would say in class about not going to Quirk on First Friday... but now I do. It was packed and in that tight space it made it very difficult to see the art. The first piece that really caught my eye were three little sculptures by Jessica Martinkosky. They were three ceramic, green, skeleton looking heads in a glass case and they really intrigued me. They had a personality about them and made me want to hold them. Unfortunately I couldn't snap a picture without the whole world seeing me...







Another piece that caught my attention (obviously, considering it took up a whole wall) were the dark green, ceramic sculptures on the wall by Hyun Kyung Yoon. This piece was hard to miss, but what really interested me about them were the long shadows they made on the walls... this picture doesn't do it justice.








The last piece I want to talk about from Quirk was made by Elizabeth Kendall. As you can tell, her sculpture protrudes from the wall and takes up a considerable amount of space. I love the way each part is layered and reminded me instantly of a piece a fellow AFO student did last year (Alyson Aversa.) I love the shadows that are made on the wall from this piece. Also, the simplicity of the black and ivory colors kept it simple and drew my into the work.




^ Next Stop ^


The work here was all pretty similar. They were very watercoloreqsue pieces, but I think they were prints, not watercolors. I really loved the colors and the composition in the piece to the right. I love the texture in the ripple and the texture in the tree bark from other pieces. What interested me the most about this work was the mixed reaction from my group of friends. The "art school" kids seemed to be pretty turned off by this work. I'm not sure why, but they just didn't care for it. On the other hand, the two students that were with us that don't attend art school loved this work- it was their favorite work from the night. They loved the colors and the simplicity and I think they loved that they didn't have to think about it too hard, it is what it is. People's reactions and explanations of their reactions interest me more than the art sometimes...






From what I could gather, Art6 was comprised of the works of Todd Hale. The first thing I noticed when I went upstairs is that I saw the first photographs I had seen all night. In the corner of this narrow hallway was a photo I really loved. It was called Miami and was pretty much split down the center- clouds on the left and building on the right. Sounds boring, but the tonality of whites, blacks, and greys in the clouds were really beautiful and the angle and perspective were really nice to look at. This piece to the left reminded my of coral or some sort of underwater scene. I love the size and length of the panel and the way the bright pink acrylic catches the light.




The rest of Todd Hale's work got a little disturbing. There were a lot of skeletal models and skeleton charcoal sketches on the wall in addition to paint drips and all sorts of paintings that resembled organs and tissues of the body. They were very interesting in a strange way. We also stopped by Art6 East, but I don't have much of a reaction to it so I'll just skip to the next gallery.



We now arrive at Ghost Print Gallery. I have other pictures from this gallery, but it was so packed in there they aren't even worth posting. Most of the paintings and other canvas pieces in Ghost Print really didn't interest me. The pieces were odd, graphic pieces with sketches and paint together and just did nothing for me. I was interested in the painting of the newspaper boxes that was taking place throughout and even outside the gallery. The designs on the newspaper boxes were bright and unique and I would love to go get a paper off the street from a box looking like that.




Now we're at ADA Gallery.



I loved this piece to the left by Eric Sall. It was gigantic and basically a mess of organized chaos. The colors were vibrant and amazing and I loved the texture of the built up paint.




A really interesting aspect of ADA was the "Blackhole Theatre" in the back of the gallery. It literally was like a black hole in the back where some video art was being shown. The main screen showed an interesting and humourous little narrative. A man created little horses, scenes, and figures out of cloth and wire and made them move like someone would when playing with action figures. He had the horses tied to a string and would pull them along and then he created a little trapeese bar apparatis for the figures to do a gymnastics routine. It was clever and funny and had a unique perspective because he didn't hide anything from the viewer. We saw how the figures were pushed or pulled and we saw him sitting there being the puppet master and making his own sound effects in addition to the background music he used.


In addition to all the art we saw at First Friday, we definitely took in a big dose of Richmond culture. Between the street corner bands, vendors, giant cat people, evangelicals, and lobbyists for various Richmond causes... the spirit of First Friday was alive and well.


As typical photo majors, we finished up the Artwalk with a group picture (minus myself.)


The photos from this blog entry are personal photos that I took that night.