First Fridays ArtWalk SJ + Street Mrkt indie urban art faire
SEPTEMBER 4th 5pm–10pm
SoFA District (& beyond!) downtown San Jose
Bring your family and friends out for a creative night of art and connect with our amazing creative community!
Galleries and museums are open late & free entry with great art exhibitions on view & special programming to experience.
Street Mrkt is an indie urban art faire where you can find something you love while supporting talented artists & creatives out on So. 1st St. (in front of Anno Domini & KALEID Gallery).
All free entry(spend it with the Artists!).
Free street parking after 6pm. Free 90 minute parking in City garages (So. 3rd & San Carlos streets)
More info: www.southfirstfridays.com
SoFA District
ANNO DOMINI // the second coming of Art & Design – 366 S. First St. map
Blissful Rituals for a Mad World
Brandan Styles (Denver, CO.) Solo Exhibition
“Blissful Rituals for a Mad World” is a collection of mixed media works by Brandan Styles. The collection explores theatrical themes within the artists’ lexicon of weirdo spiritual characters and the mad world they inhabit, as a reflection of our own.
The world is mad and always has been. In that madness, one must find their bliss. An artist finds bliss through the ritual of art making, and while ritual doesn’t change the world, it changes the one who performs it.
About the Artist:
Brandan Styles (aka Bzurk) is a storyteller, tapping into the Universal Mythology that underlies all of our culture and humanity.
His work is about creating visual poetry through the language of mythology, symbols and characters. It invites us to explore our existence further, to question everything, seek Truths and to not be afraid to go into the dark night. He combines a mixed media technique of hand cut wood, graphic and rendered style of painting, flat and three-dimensional elements: roughed, beaten, withered, aged, yet contemporary. The past speaks to us in the present.
KALEID Gallery – 320 S. First St. map
Artist’s Reception: Bring It
Judy Rookstool Solo Exhibition
Join us First Friday September 4th at 5pm–9pm for the opening of “Bring It” solo exhibition of new works by Judy Rookstool.
As a mixed-media creator I seek new ways to express my observations in a range of styles, pushing boundaries to present subjects in a conversation with paint and ephemera, using simple concepts and abstract and stylized figures.
I am a San Jose-based artist whose practice evolved after a career as a community college counselor and educator, and in my work I want to transcribe emotions in a manner that elicits thoughtful introspection. I encourage the viewer to see beyond their personal realm and to engender empathy for others, particularly womankind, reducing the effects of otherness. My pieces are an exploration of layering textures and joyful colors or moody chromas on canvas and panels — rendering a history of unexpected elements coming to the surface.
For Bring It, the figures embody emotions and attitudes that feel both very personal but also characterize others. The Eyes Have It uses mixed-media to reveal human eyes in various contexts. Team of Individuals promotes the idea that we can celebrate, yet at the same time, overcome our differences and work together.
MACLA Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana – 510 S. First St. map
Poetic Utterances: Work by Viviana Paredes
A renowned figure in contemporary art, San Francisco-based sculptor and multimedia artist Viviana Paredes creates transformative works that honor Indigenous and Latinx ancestral traditions. Supported by the Creative Work Fund, Poetic Utterances uses glass, light, sound, and organic materials to explore Indigenous practices, language, and our relationship to climate change.
Opera San José at California Theater – 345 S. First St. map
Opera San José presents Opera On First
Experience the magic of live music and theater as Opera San José opens its doors for the inaugural Opera On event at the historic California Theatre this First Friday during ArtWalk SJ. Free and open to the public, this interactive evening invites guests of all ages to explore the stunning venue while enjoying live vocal performances by Nicole Koh, Courtney Miller, Micah Perry, and Ethan Chu, accompanied by pianist Veronika Agranov-Dafoe, with sets running from 5:30 PM to 6:00 PM and 6:30 PM to 7:00 PM. Visitors can sip on refreshing lemonade, enjoy complimentary popcorn, and take in exclusive open-balcony seating to watch a dress rehearsal of Don Giovanni. Guests can also embark on a venue-wide scavenger hunt through the theater’s ornate halls for a chance to win free tickets to a full upcoming production of Don Giovanni.
Phantom Galleries at The Pierce Apts. Lobby Gallery – 2 Pierce Ave. map
Reimagined
Force129 Solo Exhibition
Inspired by getting paint on my favorite pants.
San Jose Jazz – 310 South First St. map
SJZ Break Room Jazz Jam
San Jose Jazz presents free live music with South First Friday. In September, we begin with a set by the Michael Webster Group celebrating 100 years of John Coltrane featuring some of Michael’s compositions that were inspired by him. Then, our all-ages jazz jam brings out some of the finest amateur players in the South Bay. Grab your instrument and sign up, or just drop in anytime to hear some great jazz.
Schedule:
6pm – Doors
6:15–7pm – Michael Webster Quartet
7–9pm – Jazz Jam
The jam is just one stop on a full evening in the SoFA District. South First Fridays turns downtown into a free, all-ages art walk on the first Friday of each month, with galleries, museums and venues open late.
San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles – 520 South First St. map
A Mi Manera / My Own Way.
A Mi Manera / My Own Way explores the breadth and evolution of the Latino experience through textile art, highlighting the intimate and communal acts of making that carry deep cultural memory. From inherited traditions like embroidery, weaving, quilting, and garment-making to contemporary experiments with fabric, the exhibition will feature artists whose practices draw upon techniques and materials that fill our homes, closets, and altars. These tactile practices are often passed from one generation to the next—grandmothers teaching stitches, mothers repurposing garments, fathers repairing late into the night, as well as friends learning and sharing cultural knowledge online.
The phrase “a mi manera”—“my own way”—reflects a spirit of individuality shaped by cultural inheritance. This exhibition honors how artists reclaim, rework, and reimagine traditional forms of both Latine roots and American life, transforming them into new heirlooms for future generations. Together, the works in the exhibition will form a living archive that speaks to migration, memory, labor, celebration, family, and community.
While centered on the experiences of Mexican American and broader Latino communities in the Bay Area and beyond, the exhibition also invites visitors to consider how textiles act as vessels of identity—stitched with stories, symbols, and a sense of belonging.
Historic District
Chopsticks Alley Gallery – 38 S. 2nd St. map
Pearls Remember by Charlene Tan
Across the ocean, memory gathers slowly.
Pressed by time, shaped by care, they become pearls.
Charlene Tan works with ube powder, tapioca pearls, mung beans, and pigments rooted in home and ritual. She places each element one by one in quiet devotion. Her surfaces echo ancestral weavings and tribal markings, sacred geometries that move like water, scales, and skin: snake, crab, crocodile.
Interwoven across the Philippines and the United States, suspended between digital loss and return to handmade, Tan’s labor becomes a form of meditation.
Each pattern is an act of listening—to grandmothers, to oceans crossed, to histories that refuse to disappear.
7:00 pm – “Verses in Bloom” A Night of Ekphrastic Poetry
Join us for an evening of spoken word as poets Edward Jonathans, Lorenz Dumuk, and Tryshna Malonzo share original works inspired by artworks created by Filipino Artist Charlene Tan.
Works/San Jose – 38 S. 2nd St. map
Overtime: the Work of Living
First Friday is the opening of genARTS Silicon Valley’s 6th Annual Experimental Exhibition, juried by genARTS and presented with and at Works/San José. The exhibition includes 38 artists with paintings, sculptures, photography, digital art, and mixed media. Overtime: The Work of Living examines life outside the conventional workday. This exhibition asks: what do we do when no one is managing, watching, or judging? Artists explore creative practice, domestic and emotional labor, rest, refusal, dreams, play, grief, care, and the rhythms of everyday life, as well as the body outside of productivity. The work celebrates the quiet moments that sustain us, challenges systems that consume our time, and illuminates the richness and contradiction of life beyond the workday. Join the artists in a dialogue about what we value after clocking out and what it might look like to reclaim our hours.
Martha Gardens District
Art Ark Gallery – 1035 S. Sixth St. map
Make Art for Life: a collection of paintings
Aster Vale Studio
Make Art for Life is about all the mysterious, beautiful ways art finds us. Sometimes we find the work, sometimes we find the artist, and sometimes we become artists ourselves and discover the work was waiting for us all along. And sometimes, after searching for something entirely our own, we discover that we have been surrounded by art all along.
Machu Picchu Gallery of the Americas at The Citadel – 199 Marth Street map
Arpilleras
Women of Perú living in the shanty neighborhoods of Lima create handmade “arpilleras”.
The “arpilleras” are colorful, three-dimensional, cloth pictures or appliques often reminiscent of their former village life in the Andes.
These appliques provide social commentary, story telling or scenes of planting/harvesting. The high Andes Mountains are known to produce thousands varieties of potatoes. Other foods include quinoa and tuna, the cactus fruit, often surrounded by llamas.
Unfortunately, the apilleras are slowly disappearing as a folk art. Others were made with scenes of the rainforest. The testimony and message are that we need to conserve the Amazon Rainforest of South America. Considered the lungs of our sole planet earth. Our only home.
STREET MRKT indie urban art faire
Out on So. 1st St. (in front of Anno Domini & KALEID Gallery)
SoFA District downtown San Jose
Free admission (spend it with the Artists!) and family friendly.
We are proud to support hyper-local indie artists in our community by providing them with an event that connects them with ArtWalk patrons, collectors, curators and new fans. Meet these artists when perusing original paintings, sculpture, ceramics, jewelry and unique light projections and take home something you’ll love to live with!
Participating Artists:
Art Boutiki / Dan Vado
Bad Art by Nice
BAGI / Bay Area Glass Institute
Purl Bailey aka Marilyn Roaf
BX Edits
Combsy
Crochetforloves
Crossroads
Curent Tattooing
Joe Demaree
Dream Reaper Tattoo
Emotional Software
FUSE Presents
Leysar Garcia
Katie Green
Michael Green
Ground Up Music Bus
Hand in Hand Henna
Higher Fire Ceramics
La Raiz Magazine
Lazy Daisy Designs
Joe Mandrick
Yasushi Matsui
Elizabeth Jiménez Montelongo
Nuanez Artglass Studio 408
Phin & ernxde
Quỳnh Vy art & zine workshop
Steven Reece
Ruin to Ruin
Starbunny & Rue
YMCA Camp Campbell
Food Trucks:
3 Brothers Kitchen
3 Hermanos Mexican Grill
Kabobi Persian Grill
Me Oi Vietnamese Kitchen
First Fridays ArtWalk SJ & STREET MRKT is produced by CURATUS in partnership with the participating galleries, museums and the indie arts community.
Join us on Facebook ArtWalkSJ | Instagram @ArtwalkSJ
South FIRST FRIDAYS
366 S 1st Street
San Jose, CA 95113
408-271-5155
info@southfirstfridays.com