Walking the Art Talk

Check out Jojo Abot, Adam Grosowsky and others in downtown galleries

‘Head 2’ by Adam Grosowsky

Art lovers on Lane Arts Council’s First Friday ArtWalk Jan. 4 have a delicious palette to choose from.

Among the offerings this month: Interdisciplinary artist Jojo Abot explores spirituality, community and identity in Manifestations of a God, which opens the ArtWalk at 5:30 pm Friday and runs through January at the Maurie Jacobs Community Room at the Hult Center.

The Ghanaian singer-songwriter, who also works in film, photography, writing and performance art, is in residence at the Hult during January.

Over on Willamette Street, the Karin Clarke Gallery is wrapping up its show of new works by Eugene painter Adam Grosowsky, the gallery’s most popular artist. Grosowky, who teaches art at Lane Community College, cuts a charismatic figure in the local art scene. A longtime rock climber, he is credited with inventing the sport of slack-lining, and continues to work on slack lines and slack wires in his free time.

Educated at Evergreen State College and the University of Iowa, Grosowsky early in his career had his work picked up by the Nordstrom’s department store chain, for which he has done more than 80 canvases.

His big, dramatic oil paintings combine Caravaggio lighting with a contemporary sensibility; the new works in this show introduce bullfighting scenes and circus images to his familiar big heads and figures of women. 

Grosowsky will talk about his work at the gallery, 760 Willamette Street, at 6 pm.

Other stops on the Friday walk include InEugene Real Estate, 100 E. Broadway, which is showing work by Jacqueline Victoria Davis; Oregon Art Supply, 2010 Pearl Street, with “A Study of Values,” including work from Sarah Sedwick, Jenny Gray, Ann Bumb Hamilton, Zoe Cohen and Rebecca Mannheimer; and Epic Seconds, 30 E.11th Avenue, with paintings by Benjamin Terrell.

If you can’t make it this week, you get a second chance: Springfield’s Second Friday ArtWalk takes place on Friday, Jan. 11.