The following article is from Christina Newton, director of Curated Culture, the non-profit that organizes First Friday:
August can traditionally be one of the slower months of "First Fridays" due to summer vacations, competition with outdoor events, or gallery owners closing and devoting time to sprucing up their spaces. (Visitors may not realize it, but by the end of an exhibition season art gallery walls have endured dozens of nail holes and multiple coats of Spackle and paint and are in serious need of a really good repair.)
But as we near the end of the 9th season of our First Fridays Art Walk program, we see just as much energy as any other month devoted to bringing lively activities to the Art Walk. In fact, the August 6 Art Walk will feature a major creative effort thanks to a new partnership between Richmond CenterStage Foundation, ART 180, Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Richmond, and Ace Recycling.
Paint Outside the Box is going to bring a huge creative party to East Broad Street, between 6th and 7th Streets behind the CenterStage facility, as almost 100 young artists from five Boys & Girls Clubs beautify construction debris recycling containers donated by Ace Recycling.
These young artists will be working with local artists and seasoned ART 180 program leaders: Sukenya Best, Rick Cassidy, Robert Cataldo, Hamilton Glass, and Jaffray Witherow in the creation of these brightly colored "mobile murals", which will eventually grace work sites around the state. Paint Outside the Box is a powerful collaborative effort to promote public art, the importance of recycling, as well as ART 180's important mission to enrich the lives of young people through the arts.
When asked about their involvement in this unique project, Jay Smith, spokesman for Richmond CenterStage said, "Paint Outside the Box is a perfect fit with our mission of promoting the arts in the region. Bringing kids from around the Greater Richmond area to partner with local artists is exactly what we had in mind when we developed our arts education program. ART 180 is to be commended for bringing this project to life; and tying it to First Fridays with live entertainment by the No BS! Brass Band will be the perfect cap to a great day,"
The public is invited to witness the containers' creative transformation into mobile works of art on Friday, August 6, 2010 anytime between 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., and to help celebrate the project's completion between 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Free refreshments and live entertainment by Richmond's wildly popular jazz brass ensemble No BS! Brass Band will jump-start the August 6 First Fridays. And to make heading Downtown ever so easy, visitors can enjoy complimentary valet parking at the nearby Hilton Garden Inn, located between 5th and 6th Streets, just by mentioning "ART 180"!
Learn more at Art 180's website.
For more First Fridays coverage, check out our First Fridays Guide.
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