A&E roundup: Carbondale’s First Friday features art gallery opening
By Cassandra Ballard - March 3, 2023
This First Friday gives members of the community a chance to see what their neighbors have been working on.
Carbondale is premiering two art galleries for First Friday, and one will be all local artists from Studio for Arts + Works or SAW, and the other will be featuring Kia Neill’s exhibition called “What Is This Gold Toothed Beast?”
The two galleries will open at Carbondale Arts on First Friday, and the SAW gallery will feature more than 25 artists who work in the collaborative warehouse art space.
The show will bring eclectic, quality art and community together in the same room, said Mila Rossi, a mixed media artist in the show.
SAW is a refurbished auto mechanic shop that was turned into a minimalists art studio to house a collection of local artists.
Brian Colley, the gallery manager for Carbondale Arts who is also a “resident” at SAW, said that they have done a great job of keeping the rent low and affordable.
The artists who reside there do all forms of media from ceramics and painting to weaving, photography and abstract art. One artist, Simon Klien, will be featuring a conglomeration of photos, ceramics and broadcast radio.
He said that the sound being broadcasted is a long recording, so people will hear different things as they come to view the art. It will bring different sounds and feelings throughout the display.
He described his art as a whole experience.
Another artist being featured from SAW is Savanna LaBauve. LaBauve said her art will be a ceramic basket where she is experimenting with shadow casting.
Although she usually works more with painting and drawing, she has been enjoying using ceramics.
She said she’s been using the idea of cross-hatching, a line shading technique in painting and drawing, in her ceramic work.
“It’s an exploration of those lines in three-dimensional form,” she said.
Rossi also has mixed media art that will be featured in the gallery, photography and acrylics on canvas.
The gallery is a great way to see the hard and private work of local community members that people might not know exists otherwise, Klein said.
This will be the first time in almost 10 years that the collaborative space will be featuring their art in one gallery together.
Friday’s gallery will have an open reception from 5-7 p.m., with Gavin Brooks, co-founder of SAW, and Neill speaking about the galleries.
Then, from 5-6:30 p.m. each Thursday throughout March, one to three artists from the SAW gallery will have an artist activation. The closing reception for the gallery will be on 5-7 p.m. April 6.
