Well, whaddya know. It’s time once again for another First Thursday Fayetteville.
Here’s what we know is happening at tonight’s event, which kicks off at around 5 p.m. on the downtown square.
On the square
Due to the excessive heat Fayetteville (and everyone else) is currently experiencing, the outdoor art walk, Kids’ Zone, and live music will be moved to the shade of the Fayetteville Town Center plaza. The Town Center gallery will be open and people are encouraged to use it as a cooling center in addition to hosting its regular gallery of art.
Nearly a dozen artists are on the list for tonight’s art walk including Katherine Cloud, Grant Scarsdale and Kimberly Cockrum.
» See a full list of the art walk artists
Music, a movie and more
Free movie on the square
This month’s official live music is provided by Guta, and the feature film E.T will be screened at dusk on the plaza of the Fayetteville Town Center. Bring a lawn chair.
The New Belgium charity beer garden will also return to the plaza in front of the Town Center, and will be open from 5 to 8 p.m. Proceeds from the beer garden will be donated to the Matt Miller Community Art Project.
Expect activity at Kathy P. Thompson Studios, Matt Miller studio and various other downtown businesses including Hjem Restaurant and Sound Warehouse.
Free parking is available after 5 p.m. at the Town Center garage and the city lots just off the square.
Fayetteville Underground
As one of the founding galleries of First Thursday, Fayetteville Underground regularly features a set of art exhibition openings during the monthly event. This month will see four individual artists including Duane Gardner, Ed Pennebaker, Jan Gosnell, and John Humphries.
Fayetteville Underground is located in the downstairs section of East Square Plaza.
Duane Gardner – The Day After Yesterday
Vault Gallery
Duane Gardner‘s series of paintings explores the idea of mark making as well as the process of editing. “At the beginning of this year I decided to go in a new minimalist direction and pare down paintings,” said Gardner. “I felt that my work prior to this series was very heavy handed and I wanted to move away from that.”
Gardner has also begun to experiment with using text to express feelings or thoughts. “I did not want the text to be immediately apparent so I have attempted to abstract the text,” he said. “This has been a very interesting process for me because it has forced me to think about text as shape and how to manipulate it.” To further obscure the text, Gardner draws from his Mexican-American heritage and uses Spanish translations of the words or ideas he wants to convey.
Ed Pennebaker – Concatenations/Connections
E-Street Gallery
Nature and our relationship with natural resources has always been a topic Ed Pennebaker relates to in his sculptures.
“We are all linked together,” he said. “Sometimes the simple movement of grasses and plants is mirrored in the fluidity of the glass. Other times, the concerns of what man is doing by poisoning nature and ultimately himself become the topic.”
Ed hopes to let viewers interpret and imagine something that speaks to them about our surroundings and our link to nature.
Jan Gosnell – The Fulla’ Brush Man
Hive Gallery
Jan Gosnell will be exhibiting works representative of two modes of perception. One will be works in oil on canvas and the other, figure drawings on paper.
The oil paintings are expressions of ideas created from interior resources and developed through the imagination, says Gosnell.
The figure drawings are rapidly rendered with Conte’ crayon or charcoal with great attention to exterior resources.
John Humphries – Fragments of Landscape
Revolver Gallery
As an assistant professor at and a faculty in the Armstrong Interactive Media Studies at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, John Humphries‘ extensive history includes group and solo exhibitions across the country and as far away as Germany and Georgia.
For Humphries, cities and the representation of cities are rife with uncomfortable hybrids born of erosion, neglect, misconception, new stories, changes in zoning, codes, and program. “The ability to quickly transform the essential nature of a context is not to design, create, or fabricate the ideal representation of a place,” he said. His reason for going to a place is to transform perception of a place and capture the essence of a moment.
In this exhibition, his watercolor drawings refer specifically to his current travels in Malta and focus on using the visual syntax of architecture to describe urban landscape, shadows, and sun. “Specifically,” he said, “the moments where these meet.”
