It’s time to leave the gates of the Eugene 08 Festival and venture into our community.
There is no better way to experience the character of Eugene than the First Friday ArtWalk.
Today’s walk features four very different galleries: the Fenario Gallery, the Oregon Glass Guild, the Downtown Initiative for the Visual Arts, and the Museum of Unfine Art and Record Store.
The walk will start at the Museum of Unfine Art and Record Store, 537 Willamette St., where the work of local artists Scott Boyes and Claire Flint is on display.
Boyes, voted Best Local Artist by a Eugene Weekly reader’s poll, uses skeleton figures and lollipop-shaped people to express social themes.
Flint’s work on display is a series of studies she did during her friend’s pregnancy.
Shawn Mediaclast from the Museum of Unfine Art said First Friday ArtWalk is important because there is too much emphasis on sports and not enough on art.
“Art represents the creative and constructive aspect of the culture’s psyche,” he said.
“There should be an emphasis on the power of creative and intellectual sides over strategy and militarism.”
The walk continues to the Fenario Gallery, 881 Willamette St., where “Omens and Accidents” is showing.
The exhibition is the solo work of Sarah Ciampa and features vibrant canvases filled with intricate and abstract scenes.
The next gallery on the walk is the Eugene chapter of the Oregon Glass Guild at 174 W. Broadway. The current exhibit is called “Diversity in Glass” and features a variety of glassworks from several local artists.
Featured artists Debbie McDaniel and Josh McDaniel are actually mother and son.
Josh McDaniel enjoyed glassworking so much, he got his mother involved.
Both are now instructors at the guild.
The last stop on today’s artwalk is the Downtown Initiative for the Visual Arts (DIVA) and its “The Notion of Motion” exhibit.
DIVA, located at West Broadway and Olive Street, has six galleries filled with movement-themed work by local artists.
In the main gallery, artists Tenold Peterson and Steven Oshatz collaborated on two huge paintings of men and women running.
In galleries one and two, the two artists have separate exhibits featuring vibrantly colored op art of physics equations and large, elegant pastels of dancers.
The other galleries house marathon photographs by Sergio Ortiz, greenery by Leslie Terra and kinetic sculptures by Don MacLane.
Katura Reynolds, exhibits director of DIVA, said MacLane’s interactive sculptures have drawn the most attention of the whole show.
Reynolds said the First Friday ArtWalk brings in a lot of traffic because there is a real difference between viewing art by yourself and viewing it with hundreds of other people.
“There is just something exciting about First Friday. You end up falling into conversations with complete strangers,” she said.
“The sense of community that happens on the First Friday Art Walk is just priceless.”
Tonight’s walk begins at 5:30 p.m. and includes interviews with exhibiting artists at each gallery.
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