Summer First Fridays in Rochester, like art scenes everywhere this time of year, are low gear affairs. The warm nights are more suited to watching low riders than stretching your mind. We started with that fantastic, red lentil, sweet potato dish at Good Luck. A monster thunderstorm rolled in and out before we finished. Fela Kuti was playing on the sound system in the bathroom. If this is what the kitchen staff are running on, that would explain why the food is so good.
So attendance was down at the galleries but that is not necessarily a bad thing. We were able to engage with the artists at every stop.
Nathan Lyons steals the show over at Spectrum Gallery with his color photos. If you are able to call up his images you’ll note they are usually black and white. At first encounter you read the photos literally. Funny signs, odd situations and crazy juxtapositions of elements that define our time. All are important elements but the compositions are painterly strokes of brilliance.
Jim Thomas had a mini retrospective next door at r Gallery, everything from his light sculptures to charcoal figure studies and abstracted stones in oil pastel. The exhibition featured the work of friends and colleagues associated with RIT so Judd Williams and Bill Keyser were featured as well. We chatted with Scott McCarney and Bo Poulin and headed over to RoCo for their annual State of the City show. Bleu appointed Peggi and me as this month’s “First Friday Fanatics.” I tried to refuse but the honor comes with a gift certificate to Victoire so we reconsidered. We really liked this show. A video performance group captures the outsider/insider take on Detroit. You can walk under a wild assortment of objects found on the streets of Manhattan by Laura Quattrocchi and then marvel at Ron Klein’s beautiful wall installation of both natural and man-made found objects. It is something you’ll have to immerse yourself in before the summer is over.
We parked over on Scio Street and on the wall to the car we heard indestinguishable music bouncing off the downtown buildings. It was either coming from the Puerto Rican Festival or the outdoor Donna the Buffalo concert. It was so abstract it sounded like one of Eno’s soundtracks or perhaps a sound sculpture for First Friday.
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“Fela kuti was playing on the sound system in the bathroom. If this is what the kitchen staff are running on that would explain why the food is so good.”
…Yeah!