First Fridays 1 and 2

First Fridays are events that take place the first Friday of the month in south Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where the Banana Factory Art Center is located. My studio is located at the Banana Factory – #245 if your ever in town – and is open to the public, along with most spaces in the building. I thought I’d post my impressions of my First Fridays here to give my thoughts on the encounters and comments I receive from the public on these days.

My first First Friday at the Banana Factory was March 6th and my second was just last Friday on April 3rd. Both were lightly attended according to folks here, I think weather played a role on the 6th and Easter proximity on the 3rd. For me though it seemed like there were tons of folks. I thought the conversations during both were inspiring. I remember getting interviewed by a high school student during FF on the 3rd. That experience taught me that I need to get a rap about my work down-pat. I tend to ramble when talking about my work to strangers and I think I did during that interview.

The second FF I realized how stuck artists are to their studio spaces and realized I need folks here to man my space while I walk around to see what my fellow artists are up to. FF’s tend to be the only times when most artists are in the building. I also realized that it’s not necessary on these open studio days to feed and ply with alcohol everyone who visits my space.

During both FF’s folks responded to the color in my works and it seemed they responded well to the aggressive mark-making of some of my drawings, both encouraging responses. I also got some leads that will I hope lead to some new shows. Its been a few days since the last FF so I’ll try in the future to blog closer to FF to give more details. What follows here is the studio set up for both First Fridays. I’ll try to change it up for each open studio.