All events listed occur on the first Friday of the month and are free and open to all visitors unless otherwise specified. Due to the 4th of July holiday, many of our regular galleries may not be open.
FRIDAY 09.04.26
HELLO DOLLY! An Unexpected Doll Experience | Sidestreet arts
Join us for a group show curated by assemblage artist Stephany Brockway and artist Anna Magruder, featuring 20 artists who are pushing the limits of what a doll could be in exciting and unexpected ways, creating one-of-a-kind oddities & curious collectables. Along with the unusual dolls, experience the six-foot handmade interactive dollhouse by Stephanie Brockway, a merch rack, zines, and fun surprises. The opening will also feature Doll Tarot by Ophelia Darkly.
In front of the gallery, we’ve installed a little free doll library for doll adoptions and donations. Passersby are encouraged to help themselves to a doll.
Featured artists:
Stephanie Brockway (Curator) @stephaniebrockway
Anna Magruder (Co-curator) @anna-magruder_design-illustration
Amelia Opie @ameliaopieart
Bwana Spoons @bananapoons
Charise Harper @chariseharper
Dawn Panttaja @panttajadawn
Erika Rier @erika_rier
Heide Davis @heidedavis1
Kevin Titzer @kevin_titzer
Kristin Stone @strangefolksdolls
Mathew Dennison @dennisonmatthew
Matt Burlingame @theunclepaw
Mavis Leahy
Melissa Kojima @melissa_kojima
Mika Winder
Pam Kurzen
Renee Tay @renee.tay.wee.wee.spot.of.tea
Rye Watts @ryewatts
Tamara Goldsmith @magichourglass
Tripper Dungan @tripperd
5 PM – 7 PM @ 140 SE 28th Ave, Portland, OR
Art Walk at Past Lives | Past lives Makerspace
Meet our maker Alex Eason who makes beautiful wood furniture. We’ll be decorating wood bookmarks to take home! Pop in to see all our member work or hang out and create.
6 PM – 10 PM @ 2808 SE 9th Ave, Portland, OR
Sweet Hoffmann: MILK TOOTH OPENING RECEPTION | GAGALLERY
A milk tooth arrives before we know ourselves. It loosens almost as soon as it appears.
Conflating the rituals of farm life and devotion, MILK TOOTH traces the unstable territory of matrescence through painting, sculpture, found objects, moving image, and shared ritual. Here, the fantasy of the natural gives way to something stranger. The maternal body is neither pristine nor symbolic, but animal. It shapeshifts. It nourishes. It grieves. It screams, bleeds, loves, and continues in the creation of the world.
Sweet Hoffmann’s inquiry lingers beside the contradictions that accompany becoming: dependence and ferality, exuberance and mortality, tenderness and appetite, the sacred and the abject. The works move through inherited gestures and domesticated materials, where care is held not as certainty but as an ongoing practice of transformation.
Sweet Hoffmann (dates unknown) authored recipes that could not be cooked, letters that were never mailed, and an unfinished collection of gestures passed quietly between generations. She understood that some knowledge is carried in vessels, some in songs, some in the soft underside of habit. Feed the squirrels. Save the jar. Press the flower. Set another place at the table. Love what is difficult. Begin again. The particulars of her life remain contested. The shape of her care does not.
6 PM – 8 PM @ 2035 Southeast Belmont St., Portland, OR
M. Aurora Oliva: More is More | FOrd GALLERY PDX
M. Aurora Oliva is a Filipino-American artist. She immigrated to the United States with her parents in the 1980’s. Aurora grew up and was educated in New Jersey. As a child and young adult she was creative and was never far from a museum. An idealist, she pursued a professional career in nonprofit including working at a national women’s organization in New York City and fundraising for local and national environmental groups in Portland, Oregon.
Largely self-taught, Aurora is drawn to bright, saturated colors and rhythmic patterns that evoke both playfulness and structure. She finds comfort in the repetition of geometric forms, using them as a meditative framework through which to work. Within this repetition, however, it is the moment of disruption that captures her interest. By breaking patterns—introducing irregularities, shifts, or interruptions—Aurora creates visual tension and movement, allowing the work to breathe beyond order and symmetry. These moments of fracture and variation reflect her an ongoing curiosity about balance, imperfection, and the expressive potential that emerges when structure gives way to change.
Her favorite artists include Frida Kahlo, Faith Ringgold, Kehinde Whiley and the quilters of Gee’s Bend. “Their works are a marriage of beauty and social commentary. I am always in awe.”
Aurora resides in Oregon where the rain and coffee makes everyone crafty and creative. “There must be something in the water. The trees, wetlands and beavers keep me grounded.”
6 PM – 8 PM @ 2505 SE 11th Ave., Portland, OR
Erin robinson Grant: Death and the maiden | ADX Gallery
I have always been attracted to the push and pull of imagery that depicts death and rebirth. For this body of work specifically, I looked to the Death and the Maiden motif and its evolution through German Renaissance painting and printmaking through various other art movements such as Romanticism, Expressionism, and Surrealism.
The motif most commonly depicts death (often in skeletal form) overtaking a young woman with subtle to overt erotic overtones. With these pieces, my goal was to invert this idea. Instead of death taking the maiden in the eroticism of decay and sublimation, I conceptualized the maiden overcoming the finality of death in an awesome and terrible exertion of rebirth.
Through video, sculpture, and printmaking methods, I seek to depict how the idea of rebirth is not simply the opposite of death, but its reflection that is equally as powerful and unfathomable to the human psyche.
5 PM – 9 PM @ 417 SE 11th Ave., Portland, OR
8″ x 8″ closing reception | The HAVEN PDX
Join us for another first Friday art walk on September 4th from 6-10pm.
If you missed the opening of our first bi-annual 8×8 show this is your chance to see it and meet the artists who put in so much love to make the show a success. The show features the work of nearly 35 artists displaying nearly 80 original works in all styles and mediums. Many of these beauties are very affordable.
The Haven is home to over 40 artists, healers, makers and just all around brilliant humans. Oh, and we are also a home base for Portland Psychedelic Society!
It’s going to be a super fun night with snacks, and non-alcoholic drinks, plus music from our own @rootsncultureshop as well as some of our other members and friends.
Please come celebrate art and creativity with us!
6 PM – 10 PM @ 2505 NE Pacific St., Portland, OR
FIRST FRIDAY ART WALK & OPEN STUDIOS | East creative collective
We’re excited to get back into First Friday and and will be opening our doors on September 4th from 6-9pm! Come by to meet some new artist’s, new artwork, and rotating vendors.
WHEN: September 4th, 6-9pm
WHERE: 211 SE Madison St, PDX
WHO: You, your friends, and family! All ages welcome and it’s FREE!
Make sure to visit our neighbors @wonderlove_pdx
Hope to see you soon!
6 PM – 9 PM @ 211 SE Madison St., Portland, OR
First friday art party | Mutant Network
6 PM – 9 PM @ 400 SE 12th Ave., Portland, OR
5.5 year ANNIVERSARY | sevigny studio PDX
Come celebrate 5 years (ok maybe 5.5 we’re fashionably late) of @sevignystudiopdx! Participate in a live community painting with@katiesevignystudio, sample cookies from@tina.bakes and put a little sparkle your life with @jesssterday
6:30 PM @ 3576 SE Division St., Portland, OR
Contact Us
We do our best to make the list as complete as possible, if you have an event or correction you would like to see listed please send show details to Info@FirstFridayPDX.org or use our easy online event submission form.
