Beaverton First Fridays are heating up

See you October 4th, 6-9pm

This month’s art adventure was personal. I was asked to participate in the Beaverton Downtown Association’s First Friday Art Walk. It was an exciting and rewarding experience as a local artist to meet people in my community and share my artwork.

On the day of the event both volunteers from the downtown association as well as the Interim Executive Director, Andrew Le stopped by to check in on me. I felt well supported. I was partnered with Binary Brewing who were also hosting a food pairing/ tasting event. I made new contacts, increased my Instagram followers, and sold work. People came in for the events but stayed to eat and drink, which made it a win for everyone. I hope the other participants Janice Cook, Gretchen Wright, Shioan Oudinot, Breana Thacker, Douglas Pettitt, and Gordon Campbell had an equally great time.

Beaverton businesses have been hosting an art walk for some time, but BDA has been working to make the monthly event more robust by encouraging more businesses to participate and in turn more artists.

I spoke with volunteer Event Lead, Sara Miller, about their plans. They have specific business and artist liaisons whose goal is to recruit more businesses to host artists, musicians, and food tasting events. They are providing support to hosts and artists and taking over the process of pairing them up. The downtown area is coordinated into three separate hubs for First Fridays: the live art experience at Grey Raven Gallery, the flavor hub at Binary Brewing, and the kids hub at Lazy Days brewing. Future monthly art walks will include more food tasting experiences, live entertainment, and hands on art and craft projects for children making the event something for the whole family.

Check out their website downtownbeaverton.org or follow them on Facebook and Instagram to get the latest news for future events. If you are a business, artist, craftsperson, musician, or just interested in volunteering to help email BDAfirstfridayartwalk@gmail.com and let them know how you would like to be involved.

We are fortunate to have an organization like the Downtown Beaverton Association with volunteers dedicated to enlivening the community experience and helping our downtown businesses to grow and our city to be vibrant.

The next First Friday event will be October 4th, 6-9pm. Keep supporting your local creatives and businesses!

Amy Mower is a local artist and lifelong Beaverton resident. She is passionate about the future of the arts in our community.