JOIN US for the South FIRST FRIDAYS Art Walk
First Friday DEC 2nd from 7–11pm RSVP
SoFA District (& beyond) downtown San Jose

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

All Art Walk venues are FREE and open to the public.

NEW EXHIBITS…

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

  

  For December we present intriguing hand-painted ceramic forms by Chris Ostrom. Ostrom became inspired by the gigantic, graphicly decorated works of Santa Cruz artist, Mattie Leeds, and has since left traditional glazing behind. “I found my inspiration initally in a small book of Modigliani portraits; starting there, I moved on to find other artists whose style and work resonate with my own.” – Chris Ostrom

  Reception for Chris Ostrom, a holiday gift gallery, plus kiln opening begins at 7pm — all in groovy synergy with the South First Friday Art Walk.

• KALEID gallery – 88 South Fourth St. map

  
  art work by Denis Korkh

  HARK! 11th Annual Holiday Show & Sale

  50 invited artists offer hundreds of original works of art at holiday gift giving prices. All art work purchases are first come, first served and purchases may be taken home at the point of sale.

  2016 HARK! featured artists:
  Fernando Amaro, Jr., Brandon Anderton, Darius B’Alexander, Ruchita Bahl, Joe Barajas, Sandi Billingsley, Steven Borelli , Jeff Bramschneiber, Mariana Barnes, Michael Borja, Sam Cook, DonBon, Michael Foley, Easter Godwin, Emo Gonzales, Ike Greca, Katie Gutierrez, John Hageman, Jr, Jeff Hemming, Patrick Hobbie, Kushlani Jayasinha, JayCee, Andrew Irvine, Denis Korkh, Isaac Lewin, Nicole Linde, Sarah Loyola, Valentino Loyola, Nadja Martens, Kimy Martinez, Mark Martinez, David Mejia, Lisa Mejia, Theresa Merchant, Julie Meridian, Cynthia Meyer, Jorge Mieses, Mariya Milovidova, Greg Monaghan, Lourdes Morante-Mieses, Avery Palmer, Anthony Palomo, Gianfranco Paolozzi, John Paulson, Al Preciado, Jenifer Renzel, Joshua Rios, Manuel Trujillo, Tanya Varga, Michelle Waters and Dorothy Whitman

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

  
  

  In the visual gallery: MACLA’s 6th Chicana/o Biennial.
  Experience an exhibition and public forum conceived to take inventory of and invite reflection every two years on the continuously emergent energy, critical edge, and aesthetic interventions within contemporary Chicano art. Join us for artist talks at 7pm and meet the jurors, Melanie Cervantes and Eugene Rodriguez

  

  In the Castellano Playhouse Theater: Alafia Dance Ensemble (ADE), 8:30-10:30pm.
  ADE was founded in 1980 by Valerie Watson in order to showcase the beauty of African Haitian dance. The majority of ADE dancers are students or former students of City College of San Francisco. Some recent performances include: The San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, CubaCaribe Festival of Music and Dance, World’s Culture Concert of San Francisco State University, Haitian Flay Day Celebration at Ashkenaz, La Peña Cultural Center, Great American Music Hall, Laguna Honda Hospital, Presidio’s Golden Gate Club, and City College Dance Concerts.

  In the DMCStudio:
 Monthly Youth Showcase, 6pm

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  Come experience MACLA’s DMC Youth sing, MC, and perform slam poetry. Watch the public premiere of their short films, and view their insightful photography on display throughout the evening! Must be ages 13-21 to perform in the Open Mic* *Please RSVP to dmcstudio@maclaarte.org*
  

All performances are free; no reservations or tickets required.

• Seeing Things Gallery – 751 W. San Carlos St. map

  

  It’s time for The 9th Annual Frida & Friends Fuzzy Blanket Drive and Art Auction!

  This is our favorite event of the year! Frida and her friends will be accepting blankets and towels donations on behalf of the San Jose Animal Pet Shelter. Seeing Things Gallery will also host a silent art auction featuring donated pet-inspired art by local and international artists.

  Bidding for the art pieces start at $20 and all proceeds will be donated to helping animals in need this holiday season. While we are toasty in our homes this season we think that our friends at the shelter should be too.

  Blankets and towels do not have to be new, but the shelter does ask that they be clean and ready for use. Bring your items to the gallery and we will haul them over for you. On behalf of Frida (because she cant talk or write), Thank You very much for supporting Frida’s friends at the shelter, sniff sniff, lick. XO.

• Works San Jose – 365 South Market St. map

  
  artwork by Kathryn Dunlevie

  The annual Benefit Art Auction is a chance to see and collect work from a diverse range of local and regional artists. Works’ auction is the most accessible in the region and attracts first-time to experienced collectors to bid on more that 100 artworks. Help Works start its 40th year—make a bid for freedom of expression!

  Opening reception is on First Friday, December 2nd, with Auction night on Saturday, December 10!

• 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! for the South FIRST FRIDAYS Art Walk.

  

  Upstairs gallery: “Fortunates” by Marvin Garcia and Jamie Gaspar

  “Fortunates” is an ongoing interactive installation by two up and coming artists. This collaboration came to be through a shared interest in textiles and public art. The audience are invited to this participatory installation, to inspire others to write and share a recollection of memories, confessions, and omens or, simply an inspirational quote/s and poem/s to uplift someone’s state of being.

  These colorful fabric pockets are suspended from the ceiling or tree branches. Each sewn piece contain a written note or message by previous participant, waiting to be unveiled by future ones. Their whimsical display serves as an open platform for dialogue and invites the public to participate and contribute to this ongoing project (project goal is to amass a large amount of written messages for SubZERO 2017 installation.)

  About the artists/collaborators: Jamie Gaspar is a multidisciplinary designer and artists who focuses on the nature of patter and repetition. Marvin Garcia is a sculpture, printmaker and arts educator who focuses on the notion of “power in numbers,” as a means for social change.

  

  Downstairs gallery: “The Iconography of an Expatriate” by A. Sarabia

  The pieces in this collection are a series of serigraphy prints that attempt to capture the cultural visual language that connect the artist to his beloved homeland, Mexico. Each picture corresponds to a fragments of a memory or a specific image seen growing up, or a ubiquitous cultural icon. Each picture, like the artist, is an amalgam of different styles and artistic techniques, including pen drawings, linocuts, digital designs, and silkscreen printing.

  About the artist: Antonio Sarabia is a graphic artist, photographer and writer based out of Sacramento, California. He is a freelance designer who specializes in digital graphic art, serigraphy and photography. He mixes modern and traditional graphic art techniques, creating designs in pen and pencil, translating them to digital designs in Adobe Illustrator and back to prints through a serigraphy process. He was born in Mexico City and migrated to California in 1993 .

• Downtown Yoga Shala – 450 South First St. map

  

  Visions of the West; Paintings on Silk by Danny Goldberg

  Presenting a collection of visionary landscape paintings using traditional Japanese Sumi brushes with dyes on crepe-de-chine silk. Danny’s paintings are inspired by the natural world and invoke a sense of peace and an emotional connection to the elements. Danny works in a wide variety of media and styles and has been painting on silk for over 25 years; showing his work throughout the U.S. as well as internationally. Danny received a Bachelor in Fine Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, MO. and studied printmaking and textile design at the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland. Danny has taught art at many levels from elementary to college, offering courses in Textile Design, Life Drawing, Fashion Illustration, Color Theory and more. Danny shares his art with the world in hopes of sharing the magical and mystical beauty of nature.

• Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library – 150 E San Fernando St. map

  

  

  Winter in San José
  California Room, San José Public Library

  Browse through a collection of winter wonderland images from San José; our local choir group in 1922, a mountain road trip to New Mexico and our city’s last snowfall in 1932. Plus, enjoy a performance by the Bay Bells sharing the joy of hand-bell ringing since 1986.

• Psycho Donuts – 288 South Second St. map

  
  art work by Christine Benjamin

  Hopped up on the Holidays II
  A collection of smaller, affordable original works just in time for the holidays to find that perfect one of a kind gift.

  Featuring original works by: Christine Benjamin, Kimi Star, David Mejia, Kori Thompson, John Hageman, Adam Davis, Scarydoll, DonBon, JoJo Perea, Nic Caesar, Celest Young Moss, Kori Thompson, Julie Meridian, Michael Foley, and Veronica Casson

• Reed Magazine at Christmas in the Park – Plaza de Cesar Chavez Park map

  

  Reed Magazine is hosting “An Evening of Literary Joy” at Christmas in the Park on the Community Stage. It’s on First Friday, Dec. 2nd from 8-9pm. Poets and short story writer will come together and read about “Family Traditions.” Funny to dark to funny stories will unfold.

• Social Policy – 200 South First St. map

  

  Chaos Magic featuring artists: Benny O’Hara, Coz Frimpong, Ferin Fick, Jack Hela, Johnny Rose Dalton, Martie Guile, Elliott Sky Case, Zain Ahmed

  Chaos Magic captures the untamable. A space created by those who transcend or reject societ’s demand for idenity. The artist’s intentionally featured in this show are trans, genderqueer, nonbinary, agender, etc…

  Special performances: Spoken word by Elliott Sky Case and a zine reading from Zain Ahmed

• Studio Climbing Gym – 396 South First St. map

  

  Archetypes by Jake Fouts

  Pieces from a personal project Fouts started purely to entertain his own imagination.

• TechShop San Jose – 300 South Second St. map

  

  Plankton Explorations; An installation by Michele Guieu

  Michele Guieu’s installation looks into plankton, a key element in marine ecosystems and an important provider of precious oxygen for the planet. These little organisms, on top of being vital, are also amazingly beautiful.

  During her art residency at TechShop San Jose she used different recycled and recyclable materials to create an ensemble of shapes evocative of the great variety – and fragility – of plankton species.

  The invisible world of plankton — its organisms are, for the most part, microscopic — represents food for a very large number of marine species. And phytoplankton, in particular, contributes up to 70% of the world’s oxygen to the atmosphere. As humans, we are largely unaware of the world of plankton and the critical foundation it serves for our present and future. Yet plankton needs our attention: climate change is disrupting these foundational organisms, endangering the marine food web and beyond.

  “We need to respect the oceans and take care of them as if our lives depended on it. Because they do.” ~Sylvia Earle, marine biologist and explorer.

CONTINUED EXHIBITS…

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

  
  

  Re:Colection

  A group show featuring past exhibiting artists here at Anno Domini in a broader conversation and context with each other. These selected art works are unique in perspective and style and lend important voice to the new contemporary genre.

  Selected art works by: Faring Purth (US), Mike Egan (US), Joseph Loughborough (Germany), Dale vN Marshall (UK), Poesia (US), Jeremiah Maddock (US), Cement Eclipses (Belgium), Barron Storey (US), Bruno 9Li (Brazil) Derek Weisberg (US), Daniel Jesse Lewis (US) and C’alma (Brazil)

  Beginning at 7pm: AD Limited Edition T-shirt Holiday Sale $10/ea. or 3 for $25. Designs and sizes limited to stock on hand.

•  Art Ark Gallery – 1035 South Sixth St. map

  
  photo by Alexander Eischen

  “More the Merrier” salon-style Holiday exhibition and sale

  Participating artists: Tony Adamich, Jackie Baxton, Cynthia Cao, Shone Chacko, DDEF, Dotti Cichon, Steve Clark, Cesar Cuevas, Meredith Dalglish, Dharmesh Desai, James Dewrance, Alexander Eischen, Dorit Elisha, Alyssa Eustaquio, Roberto Fierro, Cody Garza, Lauryl Gaumer, Francis Gayo, Rinat Goren, Martie Guile, Caden Hastings-Dennis, Wilbur Hurley, Jonathan Kermit, Adam Kubokawa, Nick Lomoro, Elaine Lujan, Theresa Merchant, Pragati Sharma Mohanty, Patricia Moran, Jo-Lynn Otto, Avery Palmer, Gianfranco Paolozzi, Jane Patrick, Anne Pegolotti, Rita Poutivskaia, Al Preciado, Zlata Rabinovich, Joe Bastida Rodriguez, Bob Rose, Jacob Ruggles, Jamila Rufaro, Eric Saint Georges, John Salomon, Ramya Sarveshwar, Masha Schultz, SJSU Jewelry Guild, Suha Suha, Hema Sukumar, Rachel Tirosh, Monica Valdez, Jennie Villanueva, Martin Vivanco, Rosa Younessi

• PhantomGalleries at The Pierce – 2 Pierce Ave. map

  

  “Creatures and Wunderkammers” new works by Jenifer J Renzel in the lobby of the newly opened The Pierce Apartments in the SoFA District.

  Renzel’s “Creatures and Wunderkammers” focuses on beings that never were. Come see the Huffelmump seek waffle bockers, examine miniature insect people from another planet, inspect the flying old gods from Lovecraft’s world. Can people and hardware be combined? Was there once a strange medical lab that provided ‘unique’ services to ‘unique’ patients? Come and see …

  Jenifer Renzel is an assemblage artist and painter who learned her craft through trial and error and the mentoring of good friends. She has been creating assemblages for the past 12 years, developing a unique style that is both dark and whimsical. She loves broken down old things because of the stories they carry and the things they have seen. Jenifer began painting more recently after becoming interested in modern outsider-art.

  Apartment tours available upon request throughout the evening.

• Phantom Galleries at Pho69 – 321 South First St. map

  
  

  “A Banal State of Mind” by Adrian Tsim

  In this series, A Banal State of Mind, he explores everyday mundane subjects that are often overlooked and ignored, studying their lines, forms, details and textures. He enjoys capturing the sense of serenity through simplicity, symmetry and stillness. The images bring a soothing and mesmerizing effect to the minds of the audience. It also reflects the calmness and balance he strives in his life. He prefers the delicate diffused light, photographing in the early dawn before the sun has fully risen. The absence of human presence creates a sense of solitude and contemplation.

  Adrian Tsim is a fine art photographer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Born in Hong Kong and raised in the South Bay, he has a Bachelor Degree in Painting and Drawing from San Jose State University. He has studied photography at Foothill College and San Jose City College. On his free time, he’s a volunteer Photography Teacher’s Assistant at both colleges, helping students refine their technical skills in the darkroom. For the photographs he presented in this show, he worked with scanned medium format black and white negatives and digitally printed.

• SoFA Market – 387 So. First St. map

  
  

  “15 Journals” by Gianfranco Paolozzi
  Works on canvas, paper, and wood from 1970-2016

OTHER PARTICIPATING VENUES…

• LGBTQ Youth Space – 452 South First St. map

• San Jose ICA – 560 So. First Street map

• San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles – 520 So. First Street map

• Vyne Bystro – 110 Paseo de San Antonio Walk map