First Fridays in South Bend are an Every-Month Treat for Arts Lovers

We’ve been delighted to find that “First Fridays,” a diverse set of art-related things to see and do every month in downtown South Bend, is as entertaining as the on-line promotional material promises (www.dtsbfirstfridays.com). On February 5, there were many more things to do than there was time to do them, but we managed to visit shows at the new Artpost gallery and the not-so-new New Galleries, a vast and ambitious exhibit at the South Bend Museum of Art and comedy show at Chickory Cafe.

It feels like there’s an arts community again, said Amy Kleinert, marketing manager at the South Bend Museum of Art, referring back to a period when Notre Dame art students briefly ran a gallery downtown. We were sitting at the entrance to the Century Center/SBM exhibit, watching a tony crowd wander in. This was the only ticketed event of the evening – the entry was $5, but they also had a bar and a jazz band (introduced by WVPE’s Anthony Hunt) for the crowd to enjoy. Enjoy they did, though not without also taking in the Scholastic Art Awards exhibit, which featured the work of junior and senior high school students in the area. Selected by jury, the show received over 2,200 works from seventh through twelfth graders this year, some of which will go on to participate in the final competition in New York later this year. Love the tea pots, said Garth Mason, who was strolling among the various works with his girlfriend, Nicole Koroch. Another visitor, Karen Sandoc, commented that the works reflected a greater amount of sophistication and, especially, exposure to other cultures than she felt she had ever had in high school. To look up names of winners, go to www.nwindianascholastics.com.

The New Galleries (/www.newgalleriesonlww.com) exhibit gave us a bracing dose of high modernist abstraction to start out the evening. “I’ll hang any kind of art as long as it’s excellent in its kind,” stated David Allen, director of the wonderfully renovated gallery complex. The show is of new paintings by Fort Wayne’s Norman and Dixie Bradley – though Norman’s work was much more in evidence than Dixie's. Though abstract expressionism may not be legible to the average viewer, Norman Bradley’s thickly applied paintings were, in fact, excellent in their kind.

As we walked into the living-room atmosphere at Artpost (www.artpostblog.com), Black History month was being launched by DJ Mr. Bill, who was “spinning” jazz favorites in the corner. The backdrop was a fascinating set of photographs by professionals using a range of low tech methods – pinhole and Holga cameras, but also toy cameras and homemade equipment of various kinds. Notable in the show was a group of lyrical Polaroid transfers by Jacqueline Dickey, abstract work by Chicago artist Bill Vaccaro and several impressive lomography prints by Gina Costa, who is a curator at the Snite Museum.

Our evening ended at the New-Orleans styled Chickory Café, a favorite of the literate and artsy set here in town (www.chicorycafe.net). The Chicago-based improv group, Candy in Church had both children and adults laughing. The group (www.candyinchurch.com/) managed to get quite a few out of a modest audience of about twenty people involved in their schtick. Fill in the blank, one of them shouted - “the very worst blank you have ever seen.” As people offered up their ideas of the worst whatevers for the young actors to act out, it was clear that this show – the whole night of shows, in fact, was far from the worst. It was, rather, one of the better events we have attended in this town.

South Bend is a town that many who don’t live here mistakenly assume is a college town, with a cultural life equivalent to an Ann Arbor, Michigan or a Providence, Road Island. The University of Notre Dame has not organically spawned anything similar to these towns, though it has recently put up its own alternative downtown, Eddy Commons, a shopping-mall town that still seems eerily empty. The students are also encouraged to stay on the campus, at least for their first two years, which means that all that young energy is confined to the dormitories, with their alcohol-saturated SYR (Screw Your Roommate) dances (as they used to be called) and plethora of alcohol-saturated football-related events. The DeBartolo Center for the Performing Arts, meant to foster a broader cultural enthusiasm in the student body, was also built in order to invite the South Bend public onto the campus. Unfortunately, the effects of this great financial investment on the part of the university have been slight and a severe town-gown gap continues to divide this community.

What can be done? An event like First Fridays might be sufficient, if it continues to grow, to lure the Domers out. In any case, this periodic event will inevitably continue to enrich South Bend itself and the surrounding area, bringing people closer together through arts-related events that provide opportunities for mingling and also for supporting local artists by both viewing and buying their work. Apparently there is a wealth of local talent. It takes the coordinated efforts of many, overseen by an organization like Downtown South Bend to nurture it and help it continue to emerge. For the schedule of future First Friday events and a list of participating venues, check out their web page: www.downtownsouthbend.com.