I love origin stories. They stick with you in a way that facts and dates don’t. This is often the way art gets sold and goes to a new home. You look at a painting or a sculpture that catches your eye. Someone, maybe the artist, tells you how the idea for that piece moved them to create it, or how they were drawn into that particular medium. You now have a connection to the piece, and you want to take it home and remember that story.
As you may know, Prescott’s monthly Art Walk takes place every fourth Friday evening and includes over a dozen galleries and venues featuring fine art, mostly local, and often refreshments and live music. It’s a great opportunity to wander through town checking out local art in a festive, unhurried atmosphere.
Prescott enjoys a welcoming and cooperative arts community, where instead of galleries competing for customers, they promote each other with great goodwill. If a visitor can’t find what they’re looking for in one gallery, they will be directed to another that might have what they want. Galleries will often also offer recommendations to visitors on where to go to eat. We live in a very mutually promotional town.
A fun origin story
Patti Ortiz, longtime Prescott resident and art instigator, was part of an artists cooperative in Flagstaff in the early 2000s. She and her husband moved to Prescott for his job, and she began looking around for the arts community here. Among our many galleries she joined the Loft, then located in Bashford Courts and run by Ian Russell, a painter who now owns and runs the Ian Russell Gallery on Whiskey Row.
Patti became friends with Annie Alexander, who makes exquisite handmade paper hangings she describes as transdimensional sculptures, and has shown and sold her work from her home/gallery (now called Gallery Beyond Words) on McCormick St. for decades. Patti and Annie began scheming, deciding it was time to start a regular art walk in Prescott. Annie, whose mind runs deep and wild, thought of Einstein’s theory of relativity and his four-dimensional universe, where time and space coexist, allowing for motion. They decided to call the monthly event Art the Fourth and hold it on the fourth Friday of the month. “What a perfect name for our art walk,” shared Annie, “because we wanted to make this all about movement.”
The Einstein reference was lost on most people, but the rhythm stuck, and the 4th Friday Art Walk was born.
The first came in February 2004 and included ten participating galleries. It snowed that evening and a number of galleries bailed, but Patti made her way over to Annie’s, which was of course open because she lived there, and found Annie in her driveway making a huge snow sculpture of a number four. The Art Walk was held twice a year initially, and Annie designed three-dimensional brochures for the event. Folding and distributing them was a chore. That first year Annie’s dog ran away and went up to the old Albertson’s store, where she remembered she could get a bone. The police picked up the dog and, knowing it belonged to Annie, brought it home to her. Annie was given a day of community service as a penalty, and while she was washing police cars for several hours, had the idea of getting others to help with the brochure-folding as their community service. She actually pulled this off — transgressors for art! — but found after some months that it wasn’t really sustainable.
Art Walk became a monthly event with printed brochures and has continued ever since. In February it will have been a regular event in Prescott for twenty years! While some Art Walk venues enjoy the opportunity to stay open late once a month and offer art-walkers refreshments in a welcoming art space, some venues/galleries host specific events with openings scheduled on Art Walk evenings to highlight specific artists or themed shows.
Van Gogh’s Ear on Whiskey Row has participated in Art Walk since the beginning and is a sponsor of the events, helping cover the costs of brochure printing and marketing. It’s four owners have all been in Prescott for years, know a lot of people and are committed to supporting the arts community here. Visiting VGE on Art Walk night always feels like a warm party with friends. They serve wine in real glasses (a nod to their environmental sensibilities), and always have great live music. The VGE gallery is large, uncrowded, with room to enjoy each display. It is, in my opinion, the most perfect gallery space in Prescott, thoughtfully curated and welcoming.
Arts Prescott Cooperative Gallery, also on the Row, is owned and run by over 30 local artists, so whenever you visit, one of the artists greets and assists you. AP has also participated in Art Walk since its inception. The feature event of each fourth Friday is the opening of the gallery’s monthly guest-artist show, where an artist from the community is invited to show and sell their work for a month. There is always a reception where you can meet the guest artist and enjoy live music and refreshments. Arts Prescott, right in the heart of downtown, is a lively place to visit on Art Walk, and you are always sure to encounter many of the co-op members on these festive evenings. AP also hosts a fundraiser show starting on the November Art Walk and running into January where co-op members and other local artists donate pieces to raise money for a designated local nonprofit. All proceeds from this show go to the nonprofit, and purchases are tax-free. Representatives from the designated organization are present at the fourth Friday reception to meet visitors and share information about their mission.
The Ian Russell Gallery is also open for Art Walk. Every month they focus on either a featured artist, an artist demo with clay, painting or pastels, or a themed show. About half the artists represented by IRG are local. Ian is himself an artist and has been an active member of the arts community since long before Art Walk began.
‘Tis Gallery, operating as a nonprofit with an additional building (‘Tis Annex) where it offers subsidized art classes for all ages, is another beautiful, spacious space with excellent, curated shows. Located next to Bill’s Pizza on Cortez St., the main building holds two contemporary-art galleries. The main gallery hosts themed shows that stay up for two months. Regular shows featuring local artists include Assemblage and Collage, Objects Found, and Contemporary Printmakers. ‘Tis also hosts the Journeys in Spirit exhibit, featuring works by Indigenous artists from around the Southwest. The mezzanine space, also featuring local artists, is rented on a monthly basis.
Relatively new to our community and absolutely worth visiting is The Art Hive on North Cortez St. A large, rambling space, the Hive encompasses 25 individual artist studios, a large gallery, a music studio and gathering space for workshops, presentations and meetings. The Hive brings youthful vibrancy to Prescott and is part of the ongoing revitalization of North Cortez. On Art Walk evenings most of the studios are open, and it’s a great experience to be invited into a working studio and see the creative process. The Hive is a great place to wrap up your Art Walk evening, as it has many nooks and corners where you can sit down and digest all the art and good conversation you’ve taken in. The gallery hosts member shows twice a year that stay up for two months, as well as shows by outside artists that are always thoughtfully and expertly curated. One show that made a big impression on me recently was a fiber-art show that included four local artists, two of which had large, hanging pieces. An evening of Art-Walking should include the Hive.
Sometimes overlooked on Art Walk is the Natural History Institute on Marina St. The mission of the NHI is to make natural history engaging and relevant by blending art, science and the humanities. The shows curated by the gallery focus on natural history and issues surrounding environmental protection and consciousness. One impactful show there this past year focused on the Verde River, and artists from across northern Arizona showed works reflecting personal experiences of and concerns about this endangered river. Many featured pieces are created specifically for these shows, which is not common in our arts community.
The Mountain Artists Guild on North Alarcon St. has been in existence for 75 years, supported by members who display their work and offer and participate in workshops in the facility’s downstairs studios. They schedule their monthly members meeting just before Art Walk, so many members stay to celebrate the show, which changes every two months. There are always live music and refreshments, and you can find different featured members’ works in both the spotlight room and the featured wall. Shows highlighting art created by students who participated in MAG classes are also a regular feature.
The Yavapai College Prescott Art Gallery participates in Art Walk as well, and is definitely worth visiting regularly. There you can see work by YC art students and faculty, plus both local and nationally known artists, in eight exhibitions each year. A feature of the YC campus for over thirty years, the gallery promotes inclusivity and appreciation and dialogue around the arts. The space is quiet, warm and welcoming. Located in the YC Performing Arts Center, the gallery is also open before and during intermissions of most PAC events.
We are very fortunate in Prescott to have not only an arts community that’s mutually supportive and open, but also an organized and well publicized Art Walk, providing diversity in art events. “Everybody is so effusive in their gratitude for having a designated time on 4th Friday when they know they can come in and have a meet and greet with friends and other artists,” said Cloud Oakes, director of the Art Hive. “We’ve seen it evolve,” says Christine Wallace, co-owner of Van Gogh’s Ear, “It’s tremendous now.” Taking in art is healing, and gathering with others who are also taking in art is healing for the community. We have this because local artists volunteer to organize and publicize it, and because local businesses sponsor the cost of getting the word out. These are too many to name, but you will see them on the brochure and website.
To learn more about Prescott’s 4th Friday Art Walk, pick up a brochure in any of the above-mentioned galleries or visit artthe4th.com, where you can click on any of the listed participants and see what’s featured in their venue that month.
