April’s First Thursday Gallery Walk through the art and artist-filled streets of DUMBO was the perfect warm-weather celebration of a neighborhood known for being a hub for innovation and the creative, interpretive and often visionary spirits of local and global artists.
Over 25 galleries, stores, bars and restaurants participated, each curating their own displays of photography, sculpture, paintings, drawings, mosaics, mixed media installations and film. Yet they all had a running theme of reinvention, history, conflict and memories.
At VII Gallery (28 Jay Street), a series of photographs – entitled “Questions Without Answers: The World In Pictures” – taken by different photographers captured the unexpected juxtaposition of themes, events, emotions and other connections between war-torn societies across time and the globe.
Around the corner at Bose Pacia (163 Plymouth Street), the studio-slash-gallery was transformed by current resident artist Ruby Chisti into a room littered with ravens. “Ravens are watchful. They are part of literature, story and myths. Growing up in Pakistan, in nature, my father traveled as an engineer and crows were always there as my companion,” she explained of the wire-and-cloth creations that sit in bits of fabric or stare at a golden dress dripping with tiny faucets.
Meanwhile, the main cluster of activity was over at 111 Front Street, where each suite was the site of a different exhibition, from Umbrage’s “Valley of Shadow and Dreams” photo series by Ken and Melanie Light, and United Photo Industries’s “Other Animals” collection by Elliot Ross, to the DUMBO Art Center’s usage of Robby Herbst’s acrobatics to illustrate “New Pyramids for the Capitalist System.”
Other galleries representing were Smack Mellon (92 Plymouth Street), Amos Eno Gallery, the Creatively Wild Art Studio (33 Washington Street), Spring Design & Art (126A Front Street) and more.
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