Shadow or No Shadow, It's First Saturday
February may be a month of uncertainty, but you can be sure that the first Saturday will find art galleries across Austin offering tours and special events
By Robert Faires, Fri., Feb. 6, 2004
We may begin this month with uncertainty, never sure just how Punxsatawney Phil and his burrow-dwelling brethren will react to the sight of their own dark silhouettes and whether we'll be doomed to a drab and dreary extension of Old Man Winter's annual stay, but of this we can be confident: On February's first Saturday, there will be art, and we will be welcome to see it. As they do every first Saturday of the month, galleries across Austin will be offering tours and special events to get you more excited about the paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs, and other visual creations that they're showing. Among the samplings this month:
At 1pm, D Berman Gallery, 1701 Guadalupe, is hosting a talk on its current show, "Bale Creek Allen + Malcolm Bucknall." You can learn more about Allen's sculptures built of neon and found objects, and Bucknall's detailed paintings and drawings of costumed figures from 19th-century photographs and Elizabethan portraiture with animal heads. For Rachel Koper's take on the show, see this week's Exhibitionism, p.40.
At 2pm, you can stroll around the block to Women & Their Work Gallery, 1710 Lavaca, and receive a gallery tour of its current double exhibit, "Gail Dawson: Loops & Channels" and "Angela White-Tragus: Expired Time." Dawson pulls images from digital video and paints them, interpreting the pixels as brushstrokes. White-Tragus takes photographs and presents them in a variety of ways: reflected in Mylar, framed on wood, coated in Varathane, etched in copper, etc. The accompanying image, Plunging, is one in a series of images that White-Tragus made using archival inkjet printed on transparency film with liquid plastic.
From 6-9pm, top your art-filled day off at studio2gallery, 1700 S. Lamar Ste. 318, and its artists' reception for the show "Food, Wine and Thou." Eat and drink as you contemplate the ways in which artists have creatively imagined our relationships to that which sustains us.
For more information on First Saturday, check out www.inthegalleriesaustin.com.
