It’s rare that the first Friday of the month falls on the first day of the month, but it’s happening in March, as the First Friday Art Walk will take place on Friday, March 1 at 16 venues throughout downtown Springfield.
We were joined on Arts News once again by Springfield Regional Arts Council’s director of marketing and community engagement, Rachel Lambert. She highlighted several of the March 1 Art Walk venues for us. “I feel like I was just here! But with the short month (of February), it’s right around the corner,” she said.
Lambert led off with the Arts Council’s own venue, the Creamery Arts Center (411 N. Sherman Parkway). The Creamery’s monthly art exhibit for March is called “Secondhand Emotions.” Thursday and Friday, February 22 and 23, were art drop-off days for the show, she said, “and we’ve been getting tons of pieces. We usually see between 60 and 100 pieces that are on display at the Creamery. These are all about how you represent your emotions. We wanted to see a range of emotions expressed in art, and we’ll have paintings, photography… we have someone dropping off some poetry. So a really interesting bunch of different mediums. And that’ll be at the Creamery Arts Center from 5 to 7 p.m.” on March 1.
Other shows Lambert highlighted for KSMU listeners included the Park Central Branch Library (128 Park Central Square), with their third annual “Between the Lines” show.
“This is a juried show based on a book that was popular in the previous year. This year’s book is Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt.”
The Springfield-Greene County Library system selects a book and highlights it in various ways throughout the year. Attendees at First Friday will be able to vote for their favorite artwork in the show’s People’s Choice Award, for the artwork that best represents the book’s theme. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m., and the People’s Choice will be awarded at 7:30.
“That’s really exciting,” Lambert said. “We love when we get to interact with the public. So that’s going to be a really fun one. The way the artists relate to the book in their art is really special.
“We have another show that’s going to be quite different from our norm,” Lambert continued. Formed: An Artist Collective, at 330 South Avenue, will present a new group of creative artists on March 1st with “The Mystery Box Show: A Mixed Media Experience.”
“They have 20-plus artists that were given ‘mystery boxes’ full of random, everyday objects, and they had to create an art piece” — in the theme of their favorite TV sitcom. “It’s such a weird, fun experience. And again, you get to vote for your favorite pieces. The artists will all be there to speak about their processes, how they found their voices, how they saw these pieces and created what they created.” And, of course, what is their favorite sitcom! That’s from 6 to 9 p.m.
Finally, Lambert wanted to highlight the March “Alleyscapes” immersive art experience, presented by Sculpture Walk Springfield and the Hatch Foundation. The new installation, by Liu Peng, is called “2020.” “So let your imagination run with that, what you think that might be,” said Lambert. This video-art piece will be projected from sunset to midnight throughout the month of March, in the “backstage alley” behind the Hotel Vandivort and the Landers Theatre, accessible via Robberson Alley. I asked if the Arts Council has had any arts patrons who are afraid to prowl downtown Springfield alleys, and Lambert said, “That specific alley, I don’t think so. That’s pretty open, and it’s used by a lot of people as a convenient shortcut.”
Lambert reminded our listeners that the times for the various openings and receptions on First Friday vary with the venues — the Creamery observes an “early-bird” reception time of 5 to 7 p.m., for example. “Some are open ‘til 9, some are open ‘til midnight. There’s live music at a couple of places, there’s supposed to be nice weather, hopefully the rain doesn’t come.”
For complete Art Walk information, visit springfieldarts.org, or call Claire Utley, the Arts Council’s exhibitions manager, at 417-862-2787.
