Visual

Painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, screenprinting, photography, architecture, textiles, crafts, and so much more. If you love the visual arts, don’t miss First Fridays, presented by the Downtown Spokane Partnership. Find your new favorite gallery via our interactive art map. 

Cultural
Event: Opens August 26
The Root Experience Festival

The Root Experience is a 2-night festival featuring BIPOC talent from various cultures and disciplines. The festival celebrates regional filmmakers, artists, culture bearers, musicians, and the stories they weave through their art. The goal is to uplift their narratives of culture, family, beauty, and resilience to create a network that empowers living stories and heals elements of the past and present. When talking about indigenous cultures, we must recognize the borders (state & continental) that have been placed by the act of colonization. In doing so, people of the same/ similar cultures have had their homelands divided and people they love placed on opposite sides of these borders. The Root Experience is hoping to help erase these borders by decolonizing art and social practice, providing safe and inclusive spaces to present, while connecting, partnering, and sparking conversation with our communities in the Pacific Northwest (defined as Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Alaska, Alberta (CAN), and British Columbia (CAN)).
Visual
Event: April 28
Saranac Art Projects Presents Rebekah Wilkins-Pepiton – Climbing Eros – Closing Reception & Book Signing

Climbing Eros – a series of 17 paintings made of foraged inks by Rebekah Wilkins-Pepiton. The paintings were created as part of making the film Climbing Eros, a short documentary that explores the stages of pilgrimage through the eyes of director Charles M Pepiton and his young son who walk the length of a Greek island—from the deserted lighthouse on one end to the peak of Mt. Eros—whilst artist Rebekah Wilkins-Pepiton collects botanicals and objects to create inks for painting. Each finds a means to reconcile with loss and return to the earth and to themselves. The gallery exhibition features two meditations written for the project by Damon Falke—one of confession, one of returning to materiality—that knit the threads of hiking and gathering around Jean-Luc Marion’s notion that “Loving requires distance and the crossing of distance.” The film will be screened as a part of the exhibition.
Visual
Event: June 2
Liberty Gallery Features “Myths and Legends” in June ~ Digital Works by Artist Esther Mann

From the beginning people have relied on myths and legends to give explanation of the world around them. From providing a framework for understanding natural phenomena, to giving voice to every step in the journey of life from birth, to death traditions, myths and legends give us context, keeping us steady as we take each step toward the future, the unknown. Today we also have our myths & legends, we call them psychology, or biology, or science. Names change, but the stories remain.
SA Official
Event: May 5
Architect Spotlight: J. Meejin Yoon of Höweler+Yoon

This presentation will introduce the latest installation in Riverfront Park in Spokane, Stepwell, an installation designed by J. Meejin Yoon. Stepwell is located on the former site of the 1974 World’s Fair – the first environmentally themed World’s Fair – which put Spokane at the forefront of the early environmental movement. Stepwell’s use of mass timber, a renewable building resource, recalls both the material history of the region but also asks us to consider how far environmental activism has come from the mid-1970s to today.