Don't Miss These Art Shows in Metro Phoenix This Week

Animal lovers, take note. It looks like the animal kingdom will dominate June's Third Friday offerings at Phoenix galleries, where you'll find butterflies filling a shipping container turned gallery in Roosevelt Row and all manner of fur and fowl lining the walls of an iconic television studio turned art space.

Other offerings include a show celebrating 69 years since the Roswell incident in New Mexico. Here's a look at several shows you can explore on Friday, June 17.

“Animal Menagerie”
First Studio is giving the animal kingdom its due in this exhibition featuring animal-related works in diverse media, from photography to painting, by local artists including Anne Coe, A O Tucker, Aaron Voigt, Christian Seva’aetasi, Connie Tucker, Ellen Nemetz, Jared Aubel, Joan Barton, Joanne West, Kristine Kollasch, Laurie Provost, Linda Pullinsi, Margarete Beeson, Maggie Keane, Michele Bledsoe, Pam Reinke, Pam Root, Rachel Srinivasan, Richard Bledsoe, and Robert Denning. Third Friday hours are 6 to 9 p.m. Find more information on the event Facebook page. 

“Microcosm”
Eye Lounge presents a new ceramic installation and mixed-media works by Danielle Wood, a relatively new member of the Eye Lounge artist collective. Themes related to the natural world are prevalent in the artist’s work. For this exhibition, Wood employs porcelain and thread to investigate connections between self and other, using pattern and design to visually explore both symbiotic and mutual relationships. Her installation creates “a color field experience where the viewer becomes part of the space through the surrounding texture, forms, and subtle color.” Third Friday hours are 6 to 10 p.m. Find more information on the Eye Lounge Facebook page.

“Intaglio”
MonOrchid presents a solo exhibition of photographic works by Christopher Oshana, a retired U.S. Navy veteran with New England roots, who uses photography to explore his Arizona home. His previous projects include creating and showing portraits of military veterans living with post-traumatic stress disorder. Photographs featured in this show were taken just outside the petroglyph-rich Wupatki Indian Ruins in Flagstaff. Third Friday hours are 6 to 10 p.m. Find more information on the monOrchid website.

“Alien Technology”
The Firehouse is commemorating the 69-year anniversary of a New Mexico newspaper running a headline about the U.S. Air Force recovering a crashed flying saucer outside of Roswell — an event that inspired a host of questions and legends about alien life and technologies. Arizona added to the controversy with its own alien abduction story in Snowflake during 1975, and the Phoenix Lights event in 1997. In celebration, Richard Bledsoe is curating an exhibition of extraterrestrial-related art featuring works in various media by more than a dozen local artists. Third Friday hours are 7 to 10 p.m. Find more information on The Firehouse website.

“Butterflies”
Rhetorical Galleries is presenting three exhibitions in a trio of shipping containers located in Roosevelt Row – including “Butterflies,” which includes works by printmaker Eli Richard. Richard collaborated with Amanda Blake to create an “imagined natural landscape made from manufactured materials and designed imagery.” Third Friday hours are 6 to 10 p.m. Find more information on the Rhetorical Galleries website.

“Intransition”
Five15 Gallery is showing new works by Five15 collective member Susan Risi, whose coil vessels and ceramic wall pieces featuring repeated elements are meant to prompt reflection on the beating of each heart or the taking of each breath. Third Friday hours are 6 to 10 p.m. Find more information on the Five15 Arts Facebook page.