Beyond the major museums of Rochester is a community filled with artmakers of all mediums, together a simmering creative engine that powers Rochester’s artsy feel. Each month, the city’s smaller galleries, studios, and atypical arts spaces open their doors to the community for First Friday, a citywide gallery crawl that invites the public into the creative minds of featured local artists.
In a month when many performing arts organizations are taking a well-earned hiatus, August was a great opportunity to step into Rochester’s visual arts community. In venues that stretched from Pittsford through both the Northeast and Southeast quadrants of the city and into downtown Rochester, First Friday was a chance to gallery-hop and become reacquainted with the city’s geography through its artistic spaces. All the exhibits I saw remain on view throughout the month, and much of the art viewed is available for purchase.
I began at The Yards Collective, a woman-owned art gallery at the Rochester Public Market with studios for rent, open to the public on First Fridays, Saturdays during the Public Market from 10 a.m.–2 p.m., and by appointment. The space feels delightfully quirky, with art and detritus across the gallery’s nooks and crannies.
In its upstairs space (two sets of stairs up from ground level), a female figure is the focus of the featured exhibit, displaying the work of artist Kelly Hanning. Drawn on and cut out of linoleum, the woman exudes all-consuming anxiety in the ways her figure recurs across the show in comic-book gestures and contortions. In villainous-like poses, extending through the body into claw-like hands, the internal struggle of anxiety is palpable. Colorful geometric shapes superimposed on the figure represent external circumstances beyond one’s control. In some pictures, strips of paper are strewn across the woman’s mouth, cut from the daily journal that imposes its control over life. The woman is sometimes composed, her hair pulled back into a neat bun, with the lines of anxiety running through her body. But in other prints, the woman’s hair extends into a sticky shackle, constraining her attempts to break free.
The Flower City Arts Center attracted the largest First Friday crowd in August, with two shows across the center’s two-story space. On the ground level, ceramic artists Reilly Liberto and Sydney Mass—both artists in residence at the center—shared a display room for their show “do you hear the ocean in a seashell?” a title that was pinned to the air-conditioning unit in the corner. Dreamy circus imagery was the theme of artist Liberto’s offerings, centering on large, white-faced ceramic heads, made up from cheeks to lips, with short golden-brown curls. The figures atop the heads depicted dreams, from a unicorn next to a plant to, in another, a hunter with its gun and accompanying dog. On the perimeter of the room, Liberto featured teacups with painted-on faces, which reminded me of the dishware come to life from Beauty and the Beast. Mass’s offerings were fewer than Liberto’s but complementary to the space, especially a lifelike ceramic cat curled up in a tiny wall inlet.
A photography exhibit, titled “Redacted,” by photographer Ella Tunis, occupied the upstairs gallery. The photos dealt with gender and voyeurism, with the artist taking self-portraits in questionable positions, not only in their raciness but also in their truthfulness. Is a woman atop a bed with an electronic device, held over a private area covered by both a sanitary pad and transparent black underwear, masturbating––or is the scene constructed to make us question our viewing of the intimate scene? Each image, ranging from medium-sized prints to Polaroid-sized ones, prompts the viewer to question the act of looking and the process of interpretation. This exhibit, and the one on the first floor, run through the end of the month.
Not all exhibits were in intended gallery spaces. Plenty of art across Rochester is in storefronts and coffee shops and is featured as part of First Friday. One of those venues for August’s First Friday was the Aldaskeller Wine Company on Gregory Street, at the corner of South Ave., in the South Wedge. The wine store’s crisp aesthetic, with directional lighting and blank white walls, easily transforms into a gallery space, showcasing the paintings of Brittany M. Reid, whose colors pop off the walls. Through the medium of paint, Reid lends a vibrant but pillowy softness to sky-and-ocean landscapes. About the exhibit, Reid wrote, “Every time we return to them they change. Colors deepen. Details soften. The rough edges blur.” The images are vestiges of memories that become more abstract over time, with color and affect remaining.
I made a final stop of the night at the Clocktower Gallery, a small space allocated for art inside the Mercantile on Main building in downtown Rochester, for an exhibit by artist Cassandra Clark titled “Gathering Color,” which is on view through the end of August. Although the artist works across varied media, from textile art to sculpture, most of the artworks on display were painted, with a couple featuring mixed media. A standout painting was a bouquet of daisies, in which the yellow wrapping paper over the flower stems was painted to suggest depth and dimension. A more abstract piece of art used threads of yarn covered with white material to create a series of windows, with tiny details of faces and scenes awaiting discovery. There were also still-life paintings and other idyllic works.
In the final hour of First Friday, I attempted to make a couple of other stops at the Behind the Glass Gallery, which is the upstairs glass wall space of Farmhouse Table Midtown, and International Art Acquisitions in Pittsford to see an exhibit featuring Spanish painter David Noalia, but both wrapped up before their advertised 9 p.m. end, which is something for future First Friday attendees to keep in mind. (First Friday’s website does suggest visiting suburban venues on the earlier end of the night.)
The next First Friday takes place on Friday, September 4. Visit the First Friday website for a full list of exhibits and venues.
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Featured photo: Anna Reguero
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