First Friday

First Friday
Location: Downtown Knoxville


I'm very sad to say that this was my first time to visit First Friday. I don't know why I have never done it before, because it was great. I'm sad that it was not until my last year of college that I finally started enjoying this wonderful monthly event.



I actually started my First Friday at Holly Lucas' art show titled "Go Sorority!" in the Hoskins Library. It was an interesting show. She used what looked like a combination of print making and water color to create the posters depicting each of the 18 major sororities at UT. I liked the way she placed sorority books in front of the appropriate sorority posters, thus showing the historical documents that were the basis of her artistic interpretation. I also liked her choice of Hoskins Library as the exhibit site...mainly just because I think Hoskins Library is really cool architecturally, but also because the room she displayed in had a nice open feel to it. One thing I didn't like about the exhibit was that there was no general statement describing her thought process behind the entire series nor statements regarding each individual poster and how the elements involved represented that sorority. Although Hoskins provided an adequate space to show this particular series, it would be much harder to display any works that were heavier there, like paintings.

After Holly's show, I headed downtown to enjoy First Friday in all of its glory. One thing I really like about First Friday is the general atmosphere downtown. The place is hoppin' and lively on these days. It's great to see how much of the community comes out to enjoy the art on display.












My favorite exhibition from First Friday was the Shoebox Sculpture at the Downtown Gallery. I think the whole idea of sculptures that can fit in a shoebox is really interesting and unique. Because of the small size of the sculptures, many were able to be displayed in this relatively small gallery space. Another thing I really liked about this exhibition was how the artists statement about his/her sculpture could be found by almost every sculpture. This really added to my experience because it helped me to understand the work of art a little bit better. That little snippet provided a glimpse of the artist and thus helped me to look at the work from a perspective different from my own. I really enjoyed the layout and content of this show.