First Fridays ArtWalk SJ March 6th, 5–9pm
SoFA District (& beyond!) downtown San Jose
First Fridays are especially made for wandering through our amazing galleries, museums and creative spaces where you can find fresh artworks, special performances and even meet the artists themselves.
All venues are open late, free entry and open to all ages, so bring your friends and family, explore the downtown art scene, and connect with amazing artists, inspiring art venues, and our creative community.
SoFA District
ANNO DOMINI // the second coming of Art & Design – 366 S. First St. map
Endless Draft
ZEZÃO (São Paulo, Brazil) solo exhibition
The exhibition “Endless Draft” presents a collection of works that emerge from a state in which the notion of completion becomes imprecise. It is not an unfinished work, but an open work. A work that seems to have no end. The drawing remains active, even when the work is already suspended on the wall. The moment when a work is said to be “finished” happens more as a gesture of surrender than as a definitive conclusion a conscious pause in something that could continue. This decision is intimate, silent, and does not need to be perceived by the viewer. Today, these layers cease to be merely physical and begin to exist as mental structures, as systems of thought, as logic. The subterranean becomes internal.
At this point in my practice, the work increasingly approaches drawing as a central language. More than the support– be it canvas, cardboard, or found frames– the focus is on the line as a code. The materials are necessary as a field of inscription, but what truly structures the work are the signs; graphic symbols that operate as open systems, capable of being continued, rewritten, and retranscribed.
These drawings function as expanding visual codes. They do not represent specific places or closed narratives. They suggest mental states, flows of thought, a creative mind in constant motion. They are forms that do not seek an end, but the possibility of continuity. Each line carries the idea that another line could still exist.
This series reflects a moment in which the process merges with the work itself. A time when creating does not mean concluding, but sustaining an open field of possibilities. What is seen is only a momentary interruption of the gesture. Drawing remains active like a living, infinite language, in a permanent state of construction.
KALEID Gallery – 320 S. First St. map
Artist’s reception: Visual Memory of Existence
Mahsa Emoventur solo exhibition
Emoventur explores existence as a process of becoming. Standing before blank surfaces, wall or canvas, the artist enters a state of self-exploration where forms emerge instinctively rather than by plan. Each gesture records a moment of transformation—a visual memory of existence unfolding in real time. The works do not function as fixed statements, but as traces of presence, movement, and continuous emergence. Emoventur is not a style, but a process of encountering the self through motion, color, and uncertainty.
About the Artist:
I am an Iranian-born interdisciplinary artist whose practice explores personal transformation, migration, and emotional expression through painting. Working across painting, installation, and street environments, i have painted in six countries, creating large-scale abstract works driven by movement, gesture, and layered color. Shaped by cross-cultural experience, my work investigates identity as fluid, unfolding, and continuously emerging.
MACLA Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana – 510 S. First St. map
From Their Hands to Ours
MACLA presents, in partnership with Montalvo Arts Center, “From Their Hands to Ours” our new exhibition highlighting how ancestral wisdom and childhood experiences shape identity.
Debuting new work by Estefania Ajcip, Miguel Arzabe, rafa esparza, Edra Soto, and Arleene Correa Valencia, the exhibition weaves together stories of tradition, trauma, and growth through painting, sculpture, textile art, and video.
Phantom Galleries at The Pierce Apts. Lobby Gallery – 2 Pierce Ave. map
Intuitive Abstraction
Anna Gelman solo exhibition
I call my style “abstract intuitive.” The process is guided entirely by intuition, emotion, and the subconscious rather than a predetermined plan or sketch, focused on the act of creation itself as the primary subject.
It is a conversation between the artist and the canvas. Each mark informs the next move in a continuous flow of response.
I use two general principles in my paintings: the spontaneous inner impulse and professional control over the painting as a whole. The strokes and colors are controlled instruments to express inner impulses and feelings. The shapes are often derived from landscapes and recognizable motifs, but they go beyond those elements.
Painting is the way to explore the inner world and express the intuitive sense of beauty. It is a passionate way to explore the unknown, inventing a new and a different reality.
San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art– 560 S. First St. map
My Body Was A River Once by Anoushka Mirchandani
“My Body Was A River Once” is the debut institutional exhibition by India-born, San Francisco–based artist Anoushka Mirchandani, curated by Zoë Latzer.
Featuring an entirely new body of work, the exhibition engages the senses—sight, sound, and smell—to explore memory, matrilineage, and the ways migration and place shape identity and agency. For nearly a decade, Mirchandani has developed a distinctive visual language centered on translucent, introspective female figures often situated within domestic interiors. In “My Body Was A River Once,” these figures break free from built environments, merging with waterfalls, flora, stones, and tree bark in fluid metamorphoses that blur the boundaries between body and landscape. Drawing inspiration from the Apsaras—celestial beings in South Asian mythology whose name translates to “one who moves flowingly in the waters”—Mirchandani reimagines these mythic figures as vessels of intergenerational movement, carrying ancestral stories across terrains both real and imagined. Expanding her practice beyond painting, she incorporates diaphanous silks, sculpted wooden thorns, and subtle aromas to create a multisensory environment. Together, these works form a living archive that reflects on belonging, inheritance, and transformation through the lens of mythmaking and migration.
First Friday Collage Workshop inspired by My Body Was A River Once, free and open to the public.
Data Trust by Stephanie Dinkins
The ICA San José is pleased to debut “Data Trust,” a participatory, AI-based, immersive experience considering notions of land, memory, storytelling, and our shared futures as they intersect with the potential of emergent technologies, as part of Hewlett 50 Arts Commissions. Immersive projections, animated by real-time generative AI processing of collected oral histories, create a living narrative spanning around the walls of the gallery.
Encapsulated Okra and California black oak trees grow in genetically modified soil enriched with the encoded DNA that houses shared stories into their own cellular makeup. Intentionally designed seating invites gathering, fosters intimacy, and promotes active engagement between visitors. While signaling interconnectedness and community ritual through their design, these architectural elements dissolve into the background, nurturing spontaneous dialogue and fostering an atmosphere of openness and vulnerability where participants can feel seen and that their stories are valued. Stephanie Dinkins questions the current paradigms of AI development and forges paths toward more equitable and inclusive technological futures. “Data Trust” fuses artificial intelligence, DNA, and social practice to pursue a simple goal: to honor and preserve multigenerational stories in ways that are poetic, enduring, and technologically bold.
San Jose Jazz – 310 South First St. map
SJZ Break Room
Jazz Jam Ft. Karina Denike & The Cottontails
San Jose Jazz presents free live music programming in conjunction with South First Fridays. Following sets by our SJZ U19s and the Michael Webster Quartet, our all-ages jazz jam features special guests Karina Denike, Vic Wong and other members of The Cottontails. Drop in anytime for some great jazz.
Virtuosic chanteuse Karina Denike draws from 1930s torch songs, Motown soul, and blue beat to interpret Duke Ellington tear jerkers, Fats Waller tongue-in-cheek ditties and rare gems of yesteryear. Schooled by East Bay jazz legends Jon Hendricks, Bobby McFerrin and bassist Fred Marshall, her acclaimed solo release Under Glass was named one of KQED’s Top 10 Jazz Albums of 2015. Denike has released over 30 albums as bandleader, songwriter or collaborator, including work with 8 Legged Monster, Ralph Carney’s Serious Jass Project, NOFX and Dance Hall Crashers. She has shared stages with Hope Sandoval of Mazzy Star, The Pretenders and Beck.
Partnering with Denike is Vic Wong, a jazz guitarist, double-bassist, tenor banjoist and maker who specializes in early jazz styles of the ’30s and ’40s. Vic hosts a popular music community residency in SF and performs with The Cottontails, Franco Nero and the Alcatraz Islanders. As core members of The Cottontails, these two Northern California natives share a love of ’40s swing, ’30s hot club jazz and ’60s ska and soul.
Schedule:
5:30pm – Doors
5:40pm: SJZ U19s
6:20pm – Michael Webster Group
7–9pm – Jazz Jam
San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles – 520 South First St. map
The Woven Pixel
This exhibition explores the rise of digital weaving which emerged in the early 2000s. It brings together a variety of work by artists and designers who experiment with digital looms and jacquard software. It pays tribute to two artists in particular, Bhakti Ziek and Alice Schlein, who wrote “The Woven Pixel” (2006), which quickly became something of a bible for weavers in art, design and industry—-and referenced still today. Because every intersection of warp and weft represents a pixel, weaving seamlessly merged with the earliest computer technologies. Today digital weavers are altering the landscape of contemporary art and design using algorithmic painterliness, expressive structures and flexible parametric forms. Curated by Sarah Mills.
Historic District
Chopsticks Alley Gallery – 38 S. 2nd St. map
Bầu Cua Cá Cọp – Gourd Crab Fish Tiger,
Chopsticks Alley Art proudly celebrates eight years of creativity, community, and cultural storytelling. The number eight symbolizes prosperity, harmony, and an unending flow of connection.
Under a theme inspired by the spirit of Bầu Cua Cá Cọp, the beloved Vietnamese game of chance is often played during Tết Lunar New Year. Played with three dice and six iconic symbols: a gourd, crab, fish, deer, rooster, and prawn, the game evokes luck, risk, anticipation, and joyful unpredictability.
Reflecting these qualities, the exhibition showcases artists and artworks that speak to who they are, how they see the world, and the vibrant diversity of creative expression within our community.
7pm-8pm: A Night at the Opera with SJSU Students. A preview of Byron Au Yong’s opera “Stuck Elevator.”
Works/San Jose – 38 S. 2nd St. map
Community Art Auction 2026
First Friday is opening night of the Auction exhibition! Preview and bid on the work of dozens of local and regional artists in the Bay Area’s most accessible and eclectic art auction. Bidding or not, visit the exhibition for a survey of San José to Bay Area talent. The exhibit continues through April 4 to an exciting Auction night. For 49 years, Works/San José has been your community art and performance space—the Community Art Auction is a chance to build your collection while supporting artists and your community art space!
Martha Gardens District
Art Ark Gallery – 1035 S. Sixth St. map
Codex Novus: Visual Forms of Music
by Mauricio Rodriguez
Mauricio is a Mexican American artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He works with an old heavy duty typewriter to engrave his pieces using handmade inks and artisanal pigments. He composes minimalist works that explore non realistic expression, aiming to recontextualize archetypal forms within a contemporary context.
MACHU PICCHU Gallery of the Americas, Est. 1974 – 199 Martha St. map
Chullo: Traditional Peruvian hat by Quechua Knitters from Peru
The chullo is a traditional Peruvian hat finely knitted from alpaca, llama, or sheep wool. It is characterized by ear flaps designed to protect against the extreme cold of the Andes. As a symbol of cultural identity, its colorful designs and unique patterns reflect Inca heritage and the specific identity of each community.
They are made primarily from alpaca, llama, or sheep wool, making it both soft and warm. They are usually multicolored with geometric patterns, animals (llamas, condors), or symbols that tell stories and represent community identity. Old chullos are crafted by hand using traditional and intricate techniques sometimes adorned with tiny beads, making them fine works of ancient art.
FIRST FRIDAYS ArtWalk SJ is produced by CURATUS in partnership with the participating galleries, museums and independent creative businesses.
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South FIRST FRIDAYS
366 S 1st Street
San Jose, CA 95113
408-271-5155
info@southfirstfridays.com