The Las Vegas skyline grows dark and lights begin to flicker, illuminating the sidewalk connecting several of the city’s art galleries. Packs of laughing friends and families traverse the walkways, choosing between viewing this month’s Coney Island installation and watching a band perform down the street.

The first Friday of each month draws a crowd of locals to Downtown Las Vegas for a street festival founded upon the unifying theme of expression—artistic and otherwise. This sight is uncommon in a city that struggles to foster a sense of community behind the veneer of neon and tourism; the monthly event has done much to enable the growth of Downtown as the city’s cultural center while also allowing Las Vegas artists to attract fans of their work.

Party People
Wes Myles, local photographer and owner of Downtown’s Arts Factory, began hosting street parties in the late ‘90s to create a sense of synergy within the Las Vegas arts community. At this time, the city was attempting to focus funds and energy toward building an arts district near the Lied Discovery Children’s Museum, but Myles was agitating for the city to recognize Downtown as the nucleus of the arts.

“History has always put arts districts in downtown warehouse spaces, because people who are the avant-garde will go and find these wacko places and live in them and create these great things,” Myles said. “That’s how it’s always happened, going back centuries and centuries. Why would it be any different here?”

In 2000, Myles began to organize the Gateway Arts and Music Experience, an annual festival that became the seed for what First Friday would become. With public and private funding, G.A.M.E. grew in size each year, attracting thousands of attendees and helping the Arts Sistrict to blossom. Artists realized that big events not only brought more people to the district, but also brought increasing attention to the artwork being created.

“We learned that if we had an art gallery opening together, we’d get hundreds of people, even thousands of people, would show up,” Myles said. “But if each gallery would do it independently, they’d get a few hundred people to show up. So there was this big dilemma.”

Around the time that Myles was working to organize the arts community, local business owner Cindy Funkhouser was visiting an artwalk in Portland, Oregon. Funkhouser was impressed by the event, which brought together artists, musicians and residents in a display of community spirit. She approached Myles, in addition to public officials and other patrons of the Arts District, to discuss bringing a monthly artwalk to Las Vegas.

“It just made sense to me that if they were doing it in Portland, a city of 2 million, it should work here,” Funkhouser said.

And so in October 2002, First Friday began. The initial event attracted 300 people, and attendance has increased exponentially each year since its inception. First Friday now averages between 5,000 and 10,000 attendees each month.

“What First Friday did for the Arts District is it gave it a specific day and time,” Myles said. “Before, if you were on the right list, you got a mailer…you didn’t know unless you were in the know.”

Ups and Downs
Though First Friday has drawn tens of thousands of people to Downtown Las Vegas, art may be suffering as a result. First, the monthly showings have intensified pressure on the artists, who sometimes had less than a month to prepare and install a show for the festival opening.

“Sometimes it’s unfair to the artist because sometimes the way First Friday falls, they would put so much hard work in installing it and they would have three weeks,” said Beate Kirmse, executive director of the Contemporary Arts Collective. “That’s not fair, and there’s no reason why we need to

Myles and other gallery owners decided to emphasize quality over quantity, meaning that First Friday was not and should not be the impetus for artists to create.

“At serious galleries in cities all over the country, there’s a certain schedule,” Myles said. “You get time to put the artists up, to publicize them and do the game. Once a month isn’t it. It’s just too short of a span. If we happen to have the same show up for two First Fridays in this gallery, then so be it, but we’re going to give a much higher quality of art by doing these things and by not trying to be silly about it.”

Not only are First Fridays overwhelming for artists, some think the event has become more about the party than the art.

“The bulk of the people that are coming down are coming down to socialize; they don’t care about the art. They’re mocking, they’re degrading…it’s a bit of anarchy,” Myles said. “It distracts from the folks that are interested in the art and meeting the artists and talking about it.”

To combat the perceived apathy toward the actual art on display, Myles has helped to create a First Thursday event intended specifically for art aficionados to discuss the pieces being presented at the following First Friday. The Contemporary Arts Collective, which is housed within Myles’ Arts Factory, participates in First Thursday, and Kirmse finds it a refreshing change from the First Friday event.

“You really can see it’s a different kind of crowd that’s starting to come on Thursdays,” Kirmse said. “When I started with the CAC, I heard a lot of people say they don’t really want to come on First Friday anymore because it’s so crowded. You can’t really look at the artwork or really talk to people.”

The CAC recently held a First Thursday grand opening reception for Beneath the Neon, an exhibition of graffiti artists who formerly displayed their work in the tunnels spanning the city’s underground. The installation, which is based on the recent book by Matthew O’Brien, will be on display through July 24.

This month’s First Friday event will be from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. July 4. For more information, visit www.firstfriday-lasvegas.org.

By Caitlin McGarry

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