Art

Second Friday Art Walk returns to downtown Coeur d’Alene after its winter break.

Todd Mires, a former competitive climber, has been painting consistently for the last five or six years, thanks in part to yoga.

A new museum at Washington State University aims to make art accessible to everyone, in accordance with the wishes of its namesake, Jordan Schnitzer.

This week’s art walk on Friday beckons with an evening full of creative expressions.

Megan Perkins, 30, will whip out her pens and paints to sketch just about anything. Lately Perkins has been paying a lot of attention to the world of Spokane, which is the focus of a yearlong adventure she calls “Artist’s Eye on Spokane.”

Hilary Hart couldn’t understand why a Muslim woman would willingly wear a hijab in Spokane – a city with seemingly limited diversity. So she called up the area’s only mosque and asked. Her curiosity has since led to a thriving friendship with more than 20 women, dubbed “Spokane Women Together” and starting next month, the “Spokane Women Together: Portraits and Stories” photo exhibition – an outgrowth of the group.

Sister Paula, now 96, first became a break-out Spokane arts star nearly 45 years ago when the city hosted Expo ’74. She was the metal-sculpting artist/nun who created the Garbage Goat nestled in a basalt grotto of Riverfront Park to reflect the Expo’s ecology theme.

Spokane artist Ildikó Kalapács insists that her new show, a mixed-media art exhibition on refugees with participation of refugees, is not “political.” If anyone does try to politicize the issue at her opening tonight night at Object Space, she will not stand for it. “We will not discuss politics because I am only interested in the human condition and what refugees go through,” Kalapács said. “I am a humanist. I am a visual artist. I have my own politics as a person, but to me, my artworks are only a conduit.

Montgomery, a noted plein air painter who spends a lot of time creating art in the Dishman Hills, will donate 20 percent of painting sales during the March exhibit to the Dishman Hills Conservancy.

The first time local artist Melissa Cole showed her works at Marmot Art Space was for the gallery’s opening in Kendall Yards three years ago. She was excited to help bring attention to a new art space, but had second thoughts after seeing the gallery’s temporary entrance: a huge, ugly plywood slab. “It was hilarious … It looked awful!” Cole said. “I said, ‘I’m just going to do this giant koi and put it in there and it will look so much better.’ ”

Artist Michelle Lopez is infatuated with collapse and failure. She crushes, wrecks, crumples, bends, wilts, damages and deconstructs materials and imagery to create her sculptures and installations. The results are mangled forms that invert cultural iconography.

‘Ten Years of Terrain’ opens Friday and runs through March 24 at the Washington Cracker Building.

Second annual arts event is tied to Black History Month and the annual Winter Visual Arts Tour.

Fiber artist May Kytonen, 28, did not intend to open her latest show “Close/Divide” during Saturate, the monthlong, citywide effort to focus attention on Spokane’s artists of color. But the scheduling snafu delaying her exhibition at the Saranac Art Gallery until February turned out to be a happy accident. Kytonen said she is honored to be part of Saturate, now in its second year. She is more than just supportive of the initiative to promote and highlight all local artists of color during Black History Month. She credits Saturate as a factor in her decision to stay and make a life for herself in Spokane.

“I Did It My Way” opens tonight at the Art Spirit Gallery and runs through Feb. 2. The exhibit will feature more than 130 pieces representing the seven decades of Harold Balazs’ work, including new paintings from 2017. Enamels, paintings, drawings, sculpture, and mixed media assemblages will be on display.

Starting March 1, the museum will charge a mandatory $25 entrance fee to most adult visitors who don’t live in New York state, the Met’s president and CEO, Daniel Weiss, announced Thursday. Admission will still be pay-what-you-wish for New Yorkers.

Standing in her garage-turned-studio with soaring ceilings and white walls in Spokane’s Nevada/Lidgerwood area, oil painter Shana Smith conveys ideas rapid-fire, like a machine gun. She hunts for meaningful words like an archaeologist digs for ancient artifacts. Her appetite for finding not only the right images to paint but also the right words to use is voracious and deliberate. Take the words she has chosen as the titles for the more than three dozen paintings she has created for her new show, “Perceptions of an Artist,” opening this Friday at the Kolva-Sullivan Gallery.

“He is a giant, a titan, and an example to us all.”