Lindsey Herkommer DeVries

If you thought September’s Final Friday was busy, this Final Friday is bursting with exhibitions!

Here are some events that top my list:

When was the last time you saw an art show? I mean really saw. 

The Wichita Art Museum opened its fall exhibition, American Moderns 1910 – 1960: From Georgia O’Keeffe to Norman Rockwell. The show features 57 artworks from the Brooklyn Museum of Art, a museum with a renowned American Art collection.

The Ulrich Museum’s fall exhibition Bruce Conner: Somebody Else’s Prints is a retrospective that celebrates 60 years of Bruce Conner’s print works. Conner grew up in Wichita and attended University of Wichita. He settled in San Francisco by 1957, and soon became a key visual artist of the Beat generation.

Conner was an experimental, poetic and subversive artist who made video art as early as 1958. In this exhibit, his subversion of printmaking traditions – like signing his work with a thumbprint - along with obsessive mark-making--characterize his early years.

Tom Otterness is a New York-based artist from Wichita who has two notable sculptures in town. His Dreamers Awake stands in front of the Wichita Art Museum, and Millipede, or “Millie” as she is lovingly referred to, is nestled in front of the Ulrich Museum on WSU’s campus.

Wichita is currently part of a nation-wide project called Art Everywhere U.S., which calls itself "The biggest outdoor art show ever conceived." Art Everywhere displays images of artwork in outdoor advertising spaces.

While Anne Schaefer was here for her two-week stay as artist-in-residence for Harvester Arts, she conquered Shift Space Gallery with her signature stripes and dots for a vibrant installation titled In The Thick of It.

Schaefer’s syncopated rhythms of color and pattern span more than 80 feet. Her painting is methodical, but abrupt changes in her work keep us from getting too comfortable in our expectations.

Working on the installation Sen by artist Lisa Solomon was an all-hands-on-deck affair at the Ulrich Underground. I was one of many on the team and its completion was nothing short of a Herculean effort.

The title, Sen, is the Japanese word for ‘one thousand’. Most literally, this title describes the 1,000 hand-made doilies pinned to the wall. These doilies were made by participants from around the world.

Artist and activist Armando Minjarez has been busy! He’s the driving force behind the ICT Army of Artists, responsible for the Immigration is Beautiful mural – and its loving restorations after it was defaced.

Minjarez also found the time to create an array of sculptural and installation artwork for his solo exhibition Un Recuerdito or, A Small Keepsake. Despite the diminutive in the title, the show takes over the first floor at CityArts.

The Kansas African American Museum opened a new show this past weekend commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Summer of 1964.