JOIN US for the next South FIRST FRIDAYS art walk on May 2nd from 7–11pm. RSVP

The South FIRST FRIDAYS art walk is a self-guided evening tour through galleries, museums, and independent creative businesses featuring exhibitions and special performances.

NEW EXHIBITS…

• Higher Fire Clayspace & Gallery – 499 South Market St. map

  
  

  Melissa Leeds’ glaze paintings embody the intensity and richness of the feminine. Alternately soft, wise, warm, strong and enigmatic, her subjects appear to be lost in the spaces in between, as if in the process of always becoming.

  These glaze paintings were conceived when the artist was expecting her first child. Her initial explorations into painting on ceramics, they are intricately intertwined with the newness of becoming a mother — the results — imagery that expresses exhilaration, hope, joy, fear, love, uncertainty and always an underlying strength of spirit that is palpable.

  From a very young age, art and dance played a significant role in Melissa Leeds’ life. An ever-evolving study of life experiences, her work speaks straight from the soul. Balancing the painter’s perspective with a dancer’s movement, Leeds stretches and tests the limits of glaze as a painter’s medium.

  Melissa Leeds will be on hand to demonstrate her painting technique with glaze on 3D forms at Higher Fire on First Friday, May 2nd at 8pm.

• KALEID gallery – 88 South Fourth St. map

  
  

  Artist Reception: An Artist’s Trip to Baghdad new works by Andrew Heine

  Ten years ago, I served with the US Marines during the initial invasion of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The impact has been reflected in my work ever since. For this opening, I will showcase work that highlights how my art has evolved over time and will also display pieces using found objects that I brought back with me from Iraq. The tone of the work reflects the silent observatory nature of the artist compounded with the violent chaos of combat that can make the rationalization of a situation impossible. ~Andrew Heine

  Andrew Heine was a Rifle Team Leader with the 1st Marines during the first wave of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. He now lives in San Jose, CA where he plays in the local band, Dogcatcher, and proudly raises his six chickens and a pig named Kevin.

  
  

  Artist Reception: TRANSITIONS an evolution in the artwork of Steven Reece.

  “Transitions” represents the artistic journey of in the last decade of Steven’s creative life. Transitioning from one medium to another, one year to the next, the lessons and knowledge gained from the last helps to improve and evolve his artistic practice.

• MACLA Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana – 510 South First St. map

  
  

  COSMOS CODEX
 Vargas-Suarez UNIVERSAL
May 2-August 2, 2014
California Premiere
  
Our upcoming exhibition, Cosmos Codex, comes to South First Fridays on May 2nd! Meet artist Rafael Vargas Suarez-UNIVERSAL at 6 pm. This will be his first-ever California exhibition.

  

  
8-9:30 pm FUTURE ARTS NOW! Check out this new generation of hip-hop artists with this youth performance.



• Seeing Things Gallery – 30 North Third St. map

  
  

  Deadbeat Club: Field Trip
  Grant Hatfield, Deanna Templeton,
Ed Templeton, Clint Woodside,
Devin Briggs & Nolan Hall 


  A group show by six photographer friends who came together through the sub-cultures of skateboarding and/or art to start making zines. Each working in his/her own way toward a goal of documentation in its most honest form – whether exploring the wider world or their home town of Southern California. All the photographers in this show still work with film – and though they share geographic and cultural worlds, each maintains a personal dialect and a singular tone.

• Silicon Valley Music Festival at Sliding Door Company – 355 South First St. map

  
  Flautist Dr. Elena Yarritu

  Pianist Nichole Boaz will be featured at The Sliding Door Company this month at part of the Silicon Valley Music Festival South FIRST FRIDAY Art Walk! Performance Series. She is a distinguished Jazz musician and alumni of San Jose State University.

  
  One Thousand Thousand Project by Jason McHenry

  The Silicon Valley Music Festival (SVMF) invites you to attend this month’s performance as we continue our theme of musically inspired visual artwork. Jason McHenry has been working with the Silicon Valley Music Festival over the past few months, creating works inspired by the South FIRST FRIDAY SVMF performances. In February audiences were captivated by the flawless beauty of harpist, Anna Maria-Mendieta and in March charmed by the solo guitarist, Antoniy Kakamakov. This month Jason will be on sight once again capturing the colors of jazz pianist Nichole Boaz. We invite you to participate in this drawing project along with Jason. This series is part of Jason McHenry’s One Thousand Thousand Project, an ongoing and frequently collaborative effort to produce an edition of one million hand-made, original works on paper.

• Works San Jose – 365 South Market St. map

  
  art by Lauren Jensen

  Working Parts: SJSU Animation/Illustration BFA 2014
  Presenting speculative animation and conceptual art from 57 up and coming artists who were challenged with the task of bringing eight collaborative projects to life. Featured is the preliminary work and production art for three video games done in conjunction with University of California, Santa Cruz’s M.S. Games and Playable Media program, and five short films sponsored by Adobe’s Imagination Labs reflecting on possible social and technological aspects of mankind’s future. Working Parts highlights the artists’ combined efforts as well as their individual artworks created for various film, game, and television prompts.

• ZERO1 Garage – 439 South First St. map

  
  Image credit: Pulse by Scott Gorham

  Data Exchange

  A flash drive is a small printed circuit board combined with a USB connector, insulated electrically and protected inside a simple casing which can be carried, shared, or traded. This exhibition, organized by San Jose State University undergraduate students, explores the USB flash drive as an alternative form of social networking and distribution. Five interactive projects serve as a delivery system for USB flash drives that are content specific. A thematic for each explores cultural signifiers and the possibilities of sharing data that is not readily accessible, desired, or significant. Together, the projects shape a loose taxonomy for a new Internet-based form of socially engaging with data.

  The ZERO1 Garage is also presenting the interactive light installation Pulse by Scott Gorham, and the animated game Asahi by Glenn and John Pham.

• Art Ark Gallery – 1035 South Sixth St. map

  
  

  Opening Reception: 6-9pm SJSU MFA Lift-Off Exhibition

  The graduating Masters Candidates will host a group show featuring their final thesis projects May 2nd-18th, 2014. The gallery hours for the exhibit are 12-4 pm Tuesday through Saturday. The San Jose State Art department encourages their students to explore multiple disciplines and this exhibit will highlight the traditional disciplines of painting, photography, sculpture, ceramics, glass, and digital media arts, as well as the work of those artists who crossed discipline.

  Curated by Bay Area curator, writer and art critic, DeWitt Cheng. Participating artists: Brittney Cathey-Adams, Eliana Cetto, Nathan Cox, Tyson Frederick, Chrysta Giffen, Kristen Jones, Malia Landis, Jordan Maliski, Demetra Messolaras, Sam Metcalf, Mark Pinto, Aimee Santos, Biagio Scarpello, Ben Serpa, Melanie Sharrr, Dave White, Jackie Wride

• Cafe Stritch – 374 South First St. map

  

  Lucidity Part Deux Travel Imagery by Gary Singh

  In The Old Patagonian Express, Paul Theroux writes: Travel is at its best a solitary enterprise: to see, to examine, to assess, you have to be alone and unencumbered. Other people can mislead you; they crowd your meandering impressions with their own; if they are companionable, they obstruct your view, and if they are boring they corrupt the silence with non sequiturs, shattering your concentration with, “Oh, look, it’s raining” and “You see a lot of trees here.”

  It is hard to see clearly or to think straight in the company of other people. What is required is the lucidity of loneliness to capture that vision which, however banal, seems in your private mood to be special and worthy of interest.

  In my experience, this applies at least as much to travel photography as well. One cannot get anything done when surrounded by mobs of barking tourists or even one’s own friends. Solitude is almost always required, as is an ability to perceive beauty in the commonplace and a built-in identification with whatever lurks between the cracks—creatively, geographically or even psychically.

  I have never met Theroux, but I did share stories with another iconic travel scribe, Tim Cahill, who told me, perhaps facetiously: “As long as it’s outside your own house, it’s travel writing.” Meaning, one might possibly “travel” just as much in one’s own neighborhood as he does anywhere else. That said, most of the images in this show are from around the world—everywhere from Switzerland to Thailand to El Salvador—but some are from right around the corner.

  Gary Singh is an award-winning travel journalist with a music degree who publishes poetry, paints and exhibits photographs. As a scribe, he’s published hundreds of works including travel essays, art and music criticism, profiles, business journalism, lifestyle articles and more. Operating between established realms—creatively, geographically or even psychically—Gary is a sucker for anything that fogs the opposites of native and exotic, luxury and the gutter, academe and the street.

• Discover San Jose – 150 South First St., Suite 103 map

  
  

  Tom Colla’s Vintage Signs come to DISCOVER SAN JOSE for May’s South FIRST FRIDAYS’ event. These hand designed and hand crafted works of art pay special attention to historical accuracy and authentic design. None are exactly the same and each piece is numbered, dated and signed. These nostalgic representations of original advertisements and signs pay homage to the San Jose area during the ‘golden days’ of the 1920’s through the 1960’s. Tom’s art pieces are collected by many, including local celebrities, politicians, musicians and fellow artists. Bring a part of Old San Jose to your home or business with an original work by this retro sign master! Stop by Discover San Jose and meet Tom, who will be on hand to discuss this unique process. Refreshments will be served.

• Downtown Yoga Shala – 450 South First St. map

  
  

  The exhibit at the Downtown Yoga Shala this month represents part of a school wide collaboration between Schallenberger School in Willow Glen and the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga. The school’s fourth grade students, under the guidance of artist, Susan Trimingham, and with the assistance of their classroom teachers, Binh Le Hererra, Jessica Martin-Moss, and Kim Cox, explored line, color, shape, texture, and patterns through the medium of tempura paint. Their works were inspired by a number of artists, including Pierre Soulages, Jackson Pollock, Piet Mondrian, Sonia and Robert Delaunay, Jean Dewasne, and Wassily Kandinsky. These young artists are delighted to have an opportunity to share their work.

• Pho69 – 321 South First St. map

  
  

  Artist’s Reception: Watercolors of Made’ Sukerti Berg
  Made’ Sukerti Berg was born and raised in Bali, Indonesia, a beautiful and exotic culture with emphasis on the arts and spirituality. She was a dancer in Bali, and continued to perform and teach dance in the United States for many years. In the early 1990’s she began taking art classes and painting watercolors. Over the years her focus has been on painting flowers and Balinese landscape.

  Made’s background with Bali and the arts, come together in this solo show of her watercolors. You see and feel her love and respect for the subject matter she paints. The vibrant colors remind one of the tropics. Her perspective evokes the orient and the exotic. Most of the works were actually painted in Bali and others were conceived there. A portion of the proceeds of all sales will be donated to support educational opportunities for underprivileged Balinese children.

• Street Eats & Live Beats at Parque De Los Pobladores – South First St. at William St. map

  

  South FIRST FRIDAYS presents: STREET EATS & LIVE BEATS!

  Wigglerama party featuring DJ Coco in Parque De Los Pobladores (Gore Park) in the SoFA District

  Also featuring great street eats provided by: MoGo BBQ, Quick Dog, The Waffle Roost, Banjara Bistro and Madd Mex Cantina!

CONTINUED EXHIBITS…

• Anno Domini // the second coming of Art & Design – 366 South First St. map

  

  On viewin galleryONE: Millions of Colors in the Shadow by Joe Kowalczyk (CA)

  Kowalczyk’s ceramic sculptures are the celebration of the irrational; a celebration of ideas, impulses, and desires that spring from the darker side of the subconscious. When the quiet thought: “Why did I think something so strange?” arises, Kowalczyk celebrates it and turn it into a drawing or translates it into a sculpture rather than pushing the thought aside.

  “Much of my sculpture explores aspects of the human shadow; those which we deem improper, primitive and ultimately “unfit” for modern society. These are aspects of ourselves we’ve learned to restrain in our youth, and continue to intentionally suppress as adults in order to create a more “ideal” person,” says Kowalczyk. “I highlight these aspects and put them into the physical world; to give them a face and a set of eyes, so we can confront and better understand them. As a result I better understand myself.”

  Joe Kowalczyk is an award winning sculptor, painter, and illustrator that has been creating in the California Bay Area since he received his BFA in ceramics from California College of Arts and Crafts in 2006. Along with his studio practice, Joe fixes kilns, teaches ceramics, and cofounded a fine art gallery within the Oakland Art Murmur district.

  

  On View in galleryTWO: We’s Gone Be Fine by Jeremiah Maddock (OR)

  “because I have said that verbally more times this year than ever before…and we are always gone some place rolling the dice. It’s been a nice vagabonding period.” ~Jeremiah Maddock

  All new works from our favorite hyper obsessive nomadic artist from the Pacific Northwest (this time.)

• Phantom Galleries – 95 South Market St. map

  
  art work by Dee Dee Torre

  FRPArt (Functional Restoration Program Art) uses the creation of art as a catalyst for physical, spiritual, and cognitive rehabilitation from various injuries and afflictions. In conjunction with releasing stress and anxiety through the mindful process of creation, promoting an overall sense of positivity and well being.

  Featured artists: Brandon Anderton, Carla Bolden, Betsy Braun-Kernaghan, Anthony Campisi, Liz Conklin, Chasity Washam Finney, Dyanne Hofstad, Sedara Olker, Laela Ramos, Michele Rice, Michelle Rourke, Dee Dee Torre, and Ann Wilcox.

• Caffé Frascati – 315 South First St. map

  First Fridays is Caffe Frascati Opera Night presented by First Street Singers, with the Bay Area’s finest opera singers performing your very favorite classical arias and duets live in the cafe!

• First to Market Restaurant – 399 South First St. map

  
  

  Portraits of Things by Samantha Yee

  An exploration of character, perception, and humanity through painted portraits of people and other inanimate objects. Classic examples of the portrait genre from the Renaissance through the age of Napoleon inspired the re-imagining of our modern selves and our spaces out of the skyscraper and back to the manor house.

• Psycho Donuts – 288 South Second St. map

  
  Art by Valery Milovic

  Psycho Donuts in downtown San Jose is a quirky donut shop and art gallery. The gallery displays top local artists and has an ongoing exhibit featuring the work of John Renzel, Lacey Bryant, Nicolas Caesar, Murphy Adams, Christine Benjamin, Michael Foley, Michael Borja, Valery Milovic, Carlos Villez, Eric Joyner, Laura Callin Bennett, John Hageman and Robert McColley!

• South First Billiards – 420 South First St. map

  
  

  Meshy sans Fleshy: Guitron, with a splash of Paeste. Chilled. Mario Guitron Solo exhibit, Also, the South First Billiards Dee Jae Paeste permanent collection.

• Studio Climbing Gym – 396 South First St. map

  
  

  World of Color by Joe Decker (Rockslide Photography)

  Navigating the colors of air, water and earth in locations from around the globe. Joe has explored both polar regions and the western United States in search of the incredible beautify and variety of nature. He’s been awarded artist residencies by the National Park Service, Gullkistan (an arts organization in Iceland), and Hurtigruten (a cruise line based in Norway). Joe is also the author of “The Tuesday Composition”, a best-selling photographic ebook on the topic of composition in photography.

• TechShop San Jose – 300 South Second St. map

  information not available at time of posing