F8 Fine Art Gallery
Cast your F8 to the wind
By Robert Faires, Fri., July 28, 2006
"The Last Picture Show" isn't just an evocative name for the current exhibition at the F8 Fine Art Gallery. It's truly the last picture show for this West End showplace for visual art. Amy and Richard Griffin, who launched the gallery in 2000 and made it a home for the likes of painters Ray Donley and Jennifer Balkan and photographers Rosanne Olson and Raymond Copley (as well as the Griffins themselves), are closing the space at the end of July and casting their F8 to the wind, as it were. Over the six years the Griffins have had the gallery, it's taken so much of their time that they haven't been able to pursue their creative careers. So closing F8 is really freeing their photographic spirits. The couple isn't giving up gallery life completely, however. Come the fall, you'll be able to go across the street from their current home and find their work on display in a minigallery upstairs in the Wally Workman Gallery. And the West End won't be losing an arts space. Lisa Russell is opening a second location of the Russell Collection, and she's even absorbing some of the artists from the F8 stable to show with her older masterworks. Until July 31, though, it's still F8 and still at 1137 W. Sixth. For more information, call 480-0242, or visit www.f8fineart.com.