The First Friday Of March

Yesterday was the first Friday in March, and so I decided to head down to Denver's Santa Fe Art District for the First Friday Art Walk.  This is the Month of Photography here in Denver, and so a number of galleries were featuring photographs for a change.  At the Center for Visual Art, run by Metropolitan State University, they were featuring photographs by photographers from across the country with the theme of oppression and institutionalized discrimination.  The photograph on the left shows reflected images by Krista Wortendyke, which to me were the most visually impressive.  This series was meant to question our reliance on mass media for our images and news accounts of current events.  By the way, the Santa Fe Theater, seen in the background, is looking a bit frayed around the edges these days, and as far as I can tell is now a dive bar.

Just down the street, the Knoll gallery was featuring a series of photographs by recently retired lawyer Randall Sampson.  He decided to make a bicycle trip from Washington State to Portland, Maine, and took a series of photographs with his I-Phone along the way.  A lot of them were quite good, and a lot of them were just so so. There were a lot of photos, and although he could have pared them down to just the best of the best, I think that the exhibit was more about the experience than just the photographs, with a lot of explanatory detail on the walls. The photograph on the right shows Knoll Gallery from the outside looking in, my usual perspective on most things.

And as I have remarked a number of times on this blog, there seems to be a lot of vacancies in the Santa Fe Art District these days.  Two very large storefronts - the Artwork Network space, which has downsized, and the John Fielder Photography Gallery - remain empty, as well as a number of other, smaller spaces.  Is it because winter is a bad time for art galleries, or because the galleries can no longer afford increasing rents in the district?  Kanon Gallery, an artist's collective, is moving to Lakewood, Colorado, for God's sake, near Colfax and Pierce. And therefore, for the Month of Photography, I will be visiting galleries in various neighborhoods across the city, most likely where the rents are cheaper (for now). I guess the stereotypical view of the starving artist is still valid.