First Friday still features new shows despite January slump

Many galleries typically close for January or take a hiatus from exhibits, but that hasn’t stopped three art spaces from holding events for First Friday.

Bunnell Street Arts Center has closed for remodeling, and Fireweed Gallery will close this Saturday for a month. The Homer Council on the Arts and Ptarmigan Arts also will not have shows.

The action this Friday is out east. At Creative Fire Studios on Waterman Road off East End Road, the Ranja, Jeff and M’fanwy Dean family again open up their studio for a show. Jeff Dean will give a glimpse at the sculpture process with a display of an 8-foot long steel sculpture in progress. The show runs from 5-9 p.m., giving plenty of time to browse.

Also out east, another late-night gallery, The Shop, will hold an exhibit by multiple artists, The Bag Show. To increase awareness of plastic pollution in oceans, the show features creative, reusable bags. It also shows Boomerang Bags, the bags made by Girls Scouts and others in cooperation with the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies. The Shop is open 7-9 p.m.

Closer to town, Grace Ridge Brewery will feature felt art by Hanna Young. Her funky, creative fiber art is colorful, playful and sure to brighten the dark nights of winter.

Creative Fires Studio

Waterman Road off Mile 5 East End Road

New work, art by Ranja, Jeff and M’fanwy Dean

5-9 p.m., First Friday

Dean Family Arts shows their newly renovated gallery space. Along with a wide variety of both originals and reproductions by Jeff, Ranja and M’fanwy Dean, the opening features the latest progress on Jeff Dean’s current commission for a house in the Big Lake area. The sculpture is an 8-foot long, heat tinted steel wall piece depicting an Alaska mountain landscape that will be incorporated into a second-floor railing.

Grace Ridge Brewery

3388 B. Street off Ocean Drive

Needle and wet felting by Hanna Young

5-7:30 p.m., First Friday

Fiber artist Hanna Young shows her needle and wet felt art. “My work is inspired by my children and their never ending imagination,” Young writes. “Working with children lets me see the magic in the world. I learned how to needle felt during my Early Childhood LifeWays Certification in Portland, Oregon. I use it mostly to make toys for the children, magical toys that invite imagination and never ending play.”

Young said she also learned how to wet felt flat pictures to be used as story telling aprons. “You attach a silk to the bottom of the picture and a ribbon or string around the top to go around your neck’” she writes. “Then you can sit and use puppets to tell a story with the beautiful background. The stories I tell teach the children how to play, how to use their toys with respec, and they run with the stories and add all their own personal experiences. All of the pictures and puppets are from experiences I have had around the state with my family and friends. I hope these puppets, toys and pictures inspire you and give you a warm feeling inside.”

The Shop: Kachemak Bay Art Space

60388 Bear Creek Court

The Bag Show, by various artists

7-9 p.m., First Friday Reception

The Shop presents The Bag Show, an exhibition of locally handcrafted, reusable bags that can be taken on shopping trips to help keep plastic bags out of ther oceans. Artists featured in the group exhibition are Mandy Bernard, Mary Hayden/Mud Bay Leather Goods, NOMAR, Elissa Pettibone, Salmon Sisters, Jennifer Stow/River City Saddlery.

The show also features Boomerang Bags, a collaborative vision of the local Girl Scouts and the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies. Give old T-shirts and fabrics a second life by turning them into Boomerang Bags. Bring old shirts to First Friday or drop them off at the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies. A Boomerang Bag Sew-in with CACS will be held later at The Shop in January.

Local artist and musician Charles Aguilar performs live music during the opening.

David and Elissa Pettibone pose on Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2018, by an exhibit of Karl Koett’s work at The Shop, an art space the Pettibones started in August 2018 in Kachemak City, Alaska. The Shop includes gallery space, but provides studio and classroom space as its main focus. (Photo by Michael Armstrong/Homer News)

The Dean family’s Creative Fire studios on Waterman Road includes their gallery, as seen here on a garden tour in July 2018 near Homer, Alaska. (Photo by Michael Armstrong/Homer News)

The Shop, a creative art space in Kachemak City, Alaska, started by artists Elissa and David Pettibone, is shown here on Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2018. (Photo by Michael Armstrong/Homer News)

Elissa and David Pettibone pose on Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2018, by one of David Pettibone’s paintings at The Shop, an art space the Pettibones started in August 2018 in Kachemak City, Alaska. (Photo by Michael Armstrong/Homer News)

The Dean family’s Creative Fire studios on Waterman Road includes their gallery, as seen here on a garden tour in July 2018 near Homer, Alaska. (Photo by Michael Armstrong/Homer News)

Boomerang bags, as seen here in this file photo taken in October 2017, are handmade totes and shopping bags by groups of people in communities around the world through grassroots efforts to reduce the use of plastic bags. (Photo courtesy Beth Trowbridge)