The First Friday Gallery hop gets bigger every month, so big I heard talk last night of venues switching to the second Friday of the month. Places that don’t have any real gallery space at all are jumping on the bandwagon. How would you like to have your art featured on a bright yellow wall on the down ramp at the Record Archive? Only Frank DeBlase could pull that one off. We checked out a few of these not-really-an-art-space shows last night. Geri McCormick had some beautiful letterpress prints in a show at Joe Bean on University. We had never been to this coffee bar, a real bar format but without the alcohol. They roast their own Fair Trade beans and prepare each cup to order, your choice of coffee and brew method. We bought a bag of beans to take home. It took me about a half hour to get the bag open but the coffee was delicious.
Next stop was Jembetat on Park Avenue where Heather Erwin was holding court with her Barbara Kruger meets Russian constructivist prints. I had my iPod Touch with me but was afraid to whip it out because of the rather hostile “Please . . . No Laptop or WiFi use. Please refrain from cell phone use.” signs. Meanwhile the owner was plopped on the couch cruising fb on his smart phone. I wanted to check the First Friday site to see what else was happening. Turns out we missed Pete Monacelli’s “Thoughtful Influences” show at the Philips gallery. We saw Pete at our last stop, the annual Rochester Contemporary Members Show. We talked art for a bit but mostly drums and the art of playing minimally.
I was so happy to see that Alice de Mauriac’s painting, “Interval Before The Brink” (detail shown above, click photo for full painting), won the Record Archive Award at RoCo. It was the strongest, most beautiful piece in the room. If only the MAG would feature her work in one of their biennials of regional artists. She has many more where this came from.
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