See for yourself

This year’s Fall Visual Arts Tour -is expected to have an exceptional number of oddities and curiosities.

“There is a lot of really funny stuff on this tour,” says Spokane Arts Commission Director Karen Mobley.

“When people come downtown,” Mobley says, “in addition to the traditional gallery shows, they will need to watch for interventions of artists.”

Close to three dozen Spokane galleries, arts businesses and alternative spaces are offering a broad range of art openings and idiosyncratic events during the self-guided tour on Friday from 5 to 9 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

One of the intrusions on the downtown streets is the “Barrels o’ Fun” project conceived by Pigeon Hole Gallery manager Garric Simonsen.

More than 30 55-gallon oil drums, painted by local artists, will be placed in strategic spots along the Visual Arts Tour route.

“While the images on the barrels vary widely,” says Simonsen, “a majority of the artists have directly referenced either the war in Middle East or the crisis that oil has created throughout the globe.”

Look for artful barrels near:

· Spokane City Hall at Spokane Falls Boulevard and Post Street - painted by Garric Simonsen, Bernadette Vielbig and Sara Shultz.

· Spokane Downtown Library, 900 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. - Sierra Furtwanger.

· Abraham Lincoln’s statue, Monroe Street and Main Avenue - Kenny Spurloc.

· The Spokane Club at Riverside Avenue x and Monroe Street - Alex Gibson and Carrie Scozzaro.

· The Fox Theater on First Avenue and Monroe Street - Brett Bellinger, Heather Shauvin and James Wenzel.

· Auntie’s Bookstore at Main Avenue and Washington Street - Nan Drye and James Quinlan.

· Trackside Studio and Kolva-Sullivan Gallery, 115 S. Adams St. - Dara and Tobe Harvey.

One entertaining exhibit is Bernadette Vielbig’s installation at the Chase Gallery.

Vielbig has created collages of “warm” and “cool” hues, a color-neutral wall assemblage with found objects, documentary photographs of her head when she dyed it to represent the color wheel, and a huge color wheel made from found objects.

One of the new stops on the tour is Steve Gewurtz’s studio, where he is showing recently completed bronze pieces along with clay sculptures in progress.

The Lorinda Knight Gallery is opening “Melissa Lang: New Works.”

Lang, for her first show in three years, has produced a number of large-scale gestural paintings and smaller works on paper that combine drawing and painting.

She says one of her larger canvases, the 4-foot-square “Scorpio,” was created as she was “listening to music and almost dancing on the canvas.”

Over on Adams Street, near the railway viaduct, the Kolva-Sullivan and Trackside galleries are showcasing the contemporary clay works of resident artists from the renowned Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts in Helena. There is a free workshop on Saturday at the Trackside Studio from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Venues outside the downtown core include the Tinman Gallery in the Garland District, the Corbin Art Center on the lower South Hill and the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Browne’s Addition.

Carl Richardson’s “Spectacles,” up in the MAC’s Orientation Gallery, is a wall-long installation of 400 photo-based screen prints. The works combine the artist’s fascination with eyes and glasses and his rumination on the multitude of possible variations that are expressions of each subject’s distinctiveness.

“This time around there are going to be eccentric things to watch for,” says Mobley. “The galleries are great, but there are also some funky, happening things.”