JOIN US for the next South FIRST FRIDAYS art walk on DEC 2nd. RSVP

It all kicks off at 7pm! — ART WALK venues are free and open to the public

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

  
  Blind Machi by Gustavo Ortiz (UK)

  The 11th Annual FRESH PRODUCE exhibition features 45 artists from 14 countries! Artists from around the world have created hundreds of original works of art for this highly anticipated annual invitational exhibition and affordable art sale. The artists were invited based on their unique artistic vision and contribution to urban contemporary arts and culture. Preview at 7pm, sale begins at 8pm.

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

  
  

  Killer Crystals — Jon Price’s latest creations far outshine the holiday lights in the Hi-Fi Gallery this December. Price’s carefully crafted vessels wear crystalline glazes like you’ve never seen. Think exploding fireworks on silky porcelain! Price spent years mastering finicky chemistry and quirky firing schedules to arrive at the forefront of crystalline ceramic artistry.

• KALEID gallery – 88 South Fourth St. map

  
  

  Opening Reception: HARK! The Holiday Art Show and Sale

  KALEID Gallery invites you to join us for our annual holiday art show & sale featuring 45 artists from KALEID as well as additional artists from the greater San Jose area. Original works of art at affordable prices perfect for gift giving!

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

  
  Nereida Gacia Ferraz, Untitled, opaque pigment
  drawing on cardboard, 2011

  Join MACLA for an extraordinary evening of art. In MACLA’s Gallery: Cuban Connections: Near & Far. Highlighting several Bay Area collections, this group exhibition features Cuban artists whose work explores cultural icons, architectural form, and the human condition.

• Phantom Galleries – art exhibits in vacant storefronts and alternative spaces

  95 South Market St: Shannon Amidon Kanji Garden

  

  Kanji Garden was created using hundreds of cut, hand dyed, and folded books that were destined for a landfill. The reused books that received a new life were titled “Understanding Kanji Characters” by Ping-gam Go.

• San Jose Jazz at Eulipia Restaurant – 374 South First St. map

  
  

  SEVA featuring Hristo Vitchev and Weber Iago for SJ Jazz

  SEVA was formed in late 2010 by Bulgarian modern jazz guitarist Hristo Vitchev and Brazilian piano sensation Weber Iago. Vitchev and Iago have had a long musical relationship as bandmates in the Hristo Vitchev Quartet and Quintet, the Vitchev/Iago Project, Joe DeRose and Amici as well as in special guest appearances by Hristo with the Weber Iago Quartet. All of their musical endeavors have received critical acclaim on the national and international Jazz scenes.

  With their new group SEVA the duo seeks to explore even more distant harmonic landscapes. The band combines Jazz, Classical, Latin, Pop, and Rock into an impressionistic sound as diverse as its members. For this endeavor Vitchev and Iago are joined by virtuoso bass player Dan Robbins and master drummer/percussionist Mike Shannon.

• San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles – 520 South First St. map

  
  River Ever Flowing by Mary Buskirk

  Two new exhibits! Invisible Lineage showcases the work of four influential mid 20th century fiber artists—Mary Buskirk, Lydia Van Gelder, Mary Walker Phillips, Katherine Westphal—alongside works of four late century artists, Patricia Abrahamian, Pam Moore, Karen Hampton, and Janice Sullivan.

  Collecting California is our first exhibition featuring quilts and textiles drawn from the Museum’s permanent collection by contemporary California artists. It features recent acquisitions – gifts from both artists and collectors – and showcases the rich variety, legacy, and continued evolution of the California fiber art movement.

  Join us for our South First Friday Salon art activity: Make your own decorative textile ornaments with recycled material.

• SLG Art Boutiki & Gallery – 577 South Market St. map

  
  

  San Jose comics institution SLG Publishing has its own grand tradition of putting off for tomorrow the things we should have done yesterday, so it stands to reason that we would officially be celebrating our 25th year of making comic books in the last month of the year. Come in and see some art from our quarter century of publishing.

  But of course that’s not all as the Art Boutiki goes to a tradition of it’s own, that being the celebration of FESTIVUS. Get your picture taken by our aluminum pole! Feats of strength and a return of the all so popular AIRING OF GRIEVANCES. Come let the people you love know how much they have disappointed you in the past year.

  Live music, free comic books and now stand-up comedy.

• Works San Jose – 365 South Market St. map

  
  Linda Hesh, Kiss Me/Kill Me t-shirts

  iraqimemorial.org is a participation-based conceptual project launched in 2007 as an internet platform for artists, designers, and architects to propose concepts for memorials to the unrecognized civilian casualties incurred during the ongoing conflict in Iraq. Works presents an exhibition of plans and responses selected out of the pool that now exist on the iraqimemorial.org site. The proposal guidelines encourage participants to use a wide range of locations and mediums to create collective memory and unity, drawing upon traditional and expanded ideas of memorial. iraqimemorial.org is an effort initiated by media artist Joseph DeLappe to call upon the collective creative community to consider the cost of war from all sides. The exhibition at Works presents a selection of 54 of the most striking submissions as selected by two juror’s reviews. Featured projects span a range of creative practices including: architecture, social media, geomapping, performance, video and the visual arts.

• Caffé Frascati – 315 South First St. map

  First Fridays is Caffe Frascati’s 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!

• Downtown Yoga Shala – 450 South First St. map

  
  

  Join us after Candlelight Yoga (featuring Core Flow with Noell 6–7:30pm) as we open our doors to welcome art patrons and the downtown community from 7:30-10pm. Our featured artist, Marco Zecchin, returns with his exhibit, Simply Seen.

  Simply Seen, a Photographic Journey by Marco Zecchin

  Unwrapping the gift on my 11th birthday revealed a dream come true… A Kodak Brownie camera!

  As a dream, this simple little plastic camera, was the embodiment of all the imagined realities that this regularly visited dream allowed me to explore. So on this day, I held in my hands, my “Magic Lantern.” But unlike the original, mine granted me the same wish as many times as I wanted — the wish to render what I saw as proof, to myself and others, that what I saw was real!

  Now, 45 years later, living a life defined by photography, I keep searching for the simplicity of those days.

  Newer cameras, complicated technology, client’s needs and my own artistic aesthetic have changed how I photograph and see but I can still feel, to this day, the simple excitement from that birthday. It is the litmus test I choose to help identify when I’m following “my bliss.” It was this feeling that I experienced, when I first used the Hipstamatic Camera application on my phone, that made me choose to dedicate myself to it for a year.

  With the simplicity implied in it’s name — Kodak’s classic Instamatic camera — the Hipstamatic asked me to look at the world with the same sense of innocence and wonder. Not that this is easy to do but I have delighted in the daily use of this “divining rod” to seek out my bliss and collect my “Simply Seen” photographs in search of simpler days and simpler ways!

• Good Karma Vegan Café – 37 South First St. map

  

  On View: Milk and Bones new paintings by Izer the Mizer

  An amalgamation of images from children’s book illustrations and horror films, the teachings of Rush Limbaugh and Friedrich Nietzsche, a humanity that Gandhi would have eaten for, the end of the world, the birth of a child, the death of your mother, true love, true fate, true hate, true blood, a three headed hound with no legs, a drunk on a roll.

• METRO Photo Exhibit – 550 South First St. map

  
  

  Closed in December.

• Pho69 – 321 South First St. map

  
  

  Opening Reception: Outside the Lines Inside of the Box by Jane W. Ferguson
  New abstract and floral works exploring the artist’s use of line and colour.

  Pho69 also features live contemporary music on First Fridays. Come check out local bands performing favorite covers and original music.

• Psycho Donuts – 288 South Second St. map

  
  

  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, Carlos Villez, Eric Joyner, Laura Callin Bennett, Michelle Waters and John Hageman.

  Stop by and purchase some original art for your holiday gifts! Support the arts and small business!

• South First Billiards & Lounge – 420 South First St. map

  
  

  Mesh Collective Presents: Labour of Love featuring The Rumblefish and Scarlet Stoic

  5-9pm ALL AGES. 9pm-close 21+

• TechShop San Jose – 300 South Second St. map

  
  

  Made At TechShop

  TechShop San Jose is showcasing member made projects. Featuring Joyce Steinfeld’s sculptures.

• Art Ark – 1035 South Sixth St. map

  
  

  Closing Reception: The More the Merrier II: Salon-Style Holiday Art Exhibition and Sale This is the second year of our ‘salon-style’ holiday art exhibition and sale. This year features the work of 45 bay area artists working in a variety of mediums. In the tradition of the french salon-style art exhibition, each artist is given an allotted space and encouraged to display as much work as desired. The exhibition style is intended to give the public a sampling of each artist’s current body of work. Many pieces are priced under $200 to offer affordable gifts for the holidays. Join us for this festive exhibition and celebration!