First Friday

Yesterday was the first Friday of June, and since I had the night off, I drove to Denver's Santa Fe Arts District after work for their First Friday Art Walk.  There were not a lot of people there yet, but it was still early, and so perhaps all the hipsters showed up after I left.  The first art gallery I hit was Metropolitan State University's Center for Visual Art (seen in the photo on the left), where they had on display a juried printmaking exhibition.  A lot of the prints were very good, especially the ones that incorporated photographs into their design.  I even ran across two prints by my old University of Denver Bookstore co-worker Carol, which were also quite nice.  Carol is now working as an artist full time, as is Joe, another DU Bookstore alumni.  Check out their websites at http://www.caroltill.com/index.html and http://www.joehigginsmonotypes.com/.

Speaking of photographs, there is a gallery (painted yellow) in the alley behind the east side of 9th and Santa Fe that features different photographers each month, usually displaying photographs of exotic locales.  They have a man playing a guitar out front (see photograph at right) to let you know it is an art gallery and welcomes visitors, as opposed to, for example, a crack house.  The photographs are always pretty good, the artist is always on hand to talk about his or her work, and they seem to have a lot of free food available.  My kind of place, but I don't know the name of the gallery because I always enter through the alley, and there is no sign outside.  I should have checked to see if they had any brochures available, but didn't.  My bad, as they say.  However, anyone wandering around the neighborhood will eventually run across it, as I did.  Are those enough directions for you?  I thought so.