My hat goes off to whoever the person was that rekindled the First Friday gallery night concept. We did four last night and had a good time running into people and art. Peggi planned our route before we left the house so we knocked them off like the Griswalds in “European Vacation”. We started at the Hungerford Building with a video installation by Michael Frank. Turns out we were the video installation. The little peepholes that we at first thought were the art turned out to be cameras pointed at us. Too bad we had just finished dinner because there was a nice little spread courtesy of Palermo’s Market on Culver.
Next stop was Booksmart Studio, the nicest gallery place in town, for Larissa Cleveland’s photos of mannequins. The one above reminds me of someone who comes in and cleans our house every once in a while. On to the VSW Print Loft Gallery for an invitational photo exhibition. I got the impression that they were Visual Studies students that were invited. Our last stop was Rochester Contemporary. We did the logo for this place. Tanyo Smolinsky had some really beautiful ink, wax crayon and pencil work in the lab space but that wasn’t the main show. Michael Rogers and Jack Wax were. Bleu Cease, the gallery director, was on crutches after falling while snowboarding. We said hi to Anne Havens and wandered upstairs to the artist’s spaces where we saw this beautiful painting by Julianna Furlong Williams.
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I agree that the Booksmart Studio is one of the coolest galleries in town. I haven’t been there for any openings yet, but always seem to be the only one or two people looking at the photos on the other days. Last night was no exception; of course it was one of the last days Larissa Cleveland’s work was going to be on display. I didn’t make it to the Hungerford Building, but was at the other ones on your trip. One show you missed was the opening at another photo gallery, the Image City space on University Avenue. Definitely not as spacious as Booksmart, but there were some photos I really liked. Dan Neuberger had some really nice abstractions in red, black, and white of close-ups of the lettering on a billboard. And Sheridan Vincent had an amazing night photo of Manhattan Square using a digital photo technique that combines 16 different exposures of the subject in such a way that the shadows and highlights are all correctly exposed on one print.
First Fridays was started through the Rochester contemporary art center, by Bleu Cease, executive director. Check out the website for up coming first friday participating venues and events.