An Unofficial First Friday Art Walk

I took the light rail train to Denver's Santa Fe Arts District for the First Friday Art Walk yesterday evening. It has been exactly one year since I last attended this event. It was shut down after March of last year due to the coronavirus. However, the biennial Month of Photography takes place in Denver this month, and I saw on the Colorado Photographic Arts Center (CPAC) web site that the Bitfactory Gallery (which I have a habit of calling the Bitcoin Gallery, and seen in the photo on the left) had a new exhibit called Urbane, featuring "photographic interpretations of urban landscapes" by four photographers - David Eichler, Jeremy Patlin, Bailey Russel, and Lea Wagner - and would be open on First Friday, March 5th. It was definitely something I wanted to see it, and I must say, the photographs in this show are really very good.

I checked online to see how long ago the First Friday Art Walk had resumed, and discovered that it is officially still only a virtual event. Which explained why a lot of the galleries were not open yesterday night. However, about half of them were, although as you can imagine, the attendance was fairly low, as can be seen in the photograph on the right, taken at the Center For Visual Art, which is featuring 80 self portraits by South African photographer Zanele Muholi. Since this is an informal First Friday, many of the galleries had different hours. The Center for Visual Art closed at 6:00 Friday night, while The Bitcoin (I mean Bitfactory) Gallery didn't even open until 6:00. Not a problem if you are an early bird like me, and arrive at 5:30, which has always been First Friday's starting time.

Happily, the Museo de las Americas was officially acknowledging First Friday yesterday evening, which meant that admission was free, saving me paying the $5 senior rate. The museum was featuring portraits by a photographer named Gaal of the indigenous Otomi community of Mexico. He printed these photos using that region's traditional amate paper. These photographs are large, very powerful diptychs, and can be seen in the photograph on the left.

On the way back to the light rail station, I stopped at the Grace Gallery, which did not have any special new exhibits for the Month of Photography. However, I still checked out all three floors and took the photograph on the right on the second floor. As I was leaving, one of the artists asked me what work of art I liked so much that I took a photograph of it. I told him that I was mainly taking a photo of the wall and the street outside, and not a specific work of art. Not a tactful answer, I'm afraid. That is the problem with being the only visitor in an art gallery -  not much chance of blending in and being unnoticed.