Friday is already the best day of the work-week—and for those whose artsy fartsy souls are enslaved to 9-5 jobs, the first Friday could be the best Friday of the month as Dupont art galleries open their doors to DC’s office space audiences by extending their hours from 6-8pm.  However, this monthly affair that is not so imaginatively named “First Fridays,” generally doesn’t spotlight the best art in DC—that is if you are limiting to yourself to what is neatly framed, hung, or displayed.

The Kathleen Ewing Gallery, which features vintage and contemporary photography, is always hit or miss.  This month’s exhibition, entitled “Tails of Art: A Survey of the Animal in Photography, Painting, Drawing, and Sculpture,” sounds like a miss.  It consists of Kathleen Ewing’s personal photo collection of prized farm animals, pets, and wildlife.

The $1,000 prints by April Katz at the Washington Printmakers Gallery are nice—for a computer desktop maybe.  The 2007 National Small Works Show that is being showed alongside Katz, might be more promising.

 The America, Oh Yes! gallery which exclusively features the art of self-taught artists is currently exhibiting the unoriginal work of Picasso copy-cat, Elwyn Hudson.  

 First Fridays is worth going to because it doesn’t exclusively draw art snobs and collectors.  Whether its causation, correlation, or pure coincidence, I’ve found that the worse the art, the better the food and more abundant the wine.  As a result, the crowd that First Fridays attracts usually upstages the art by creating rivaling juxtapositions that are both enlightening and captivating in their own right.  

I once witnessed an elderly man who smelled of moth balls stuffing handfuls of baby carrots into his weathered corduroy pockets. I’ve poured a glass of chardonnay for the trailing homeless woman who spends nine hour days pushing her cart up and down Connecticut Ave.  The curator’s irritated and poorly suppressed glare is always abstractly picturesque.

Ultimately, beauty (and art) is in the eyes of First Fridays’ diverse beholders.  My eyes gravitate towards DC’s interesting sidewalk celebrities whose own gaze is bewitched by the brie cheese and wine.  And if the art is actually good—all the better.