This past Friday, I went to the “First Fridays” at two different museums with a couple of friends. I visited the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis on Washington Boulevard, and the Bruno Davis Gallery. Unlike the Sheldon Art Gallery (which I visited previously), the Contemporary Museum is an interactive museum with a live DJ in addition to the various pieces of art. The Bruno Davis Gallery houses all contemporary art pieces.

Out of the two galleries, my favorite was the Contemporary Art Museum because of the wide variety of activities it had to offer. First, of course, it had many pieces of modern art. One section of the gallery was dedicated to an artist who manipulates dollar bills; including making them look like plant cells, or shading out all of the dollar ink. Furthermore, the gallery gave viewers the chance to actively engage in the artwork and decorate their own dollar bills. The dollar bills created were then taken and put on a wall in the gallery and used to put an end to lead poisoning. After the wall was filled, gallery employees would take down the dollars and the process would repeat itself.

Another area of the gallery was dedicated to the works of Dutch artist Carla Klein. In this area, a DJ played, and open bar served patrons as they looked at the enormous paintings covering the walls, with smaller ones intermixed.

Klein paints pictures of her photographs. She was most interested in the difference in her photographs and paintings. Thus, all of her paintings were landscapes that looked as if they stretched on infinitely.

In my opinion, the most interesting and thought-provoking pieces of art were Mark Flood’s. Flood specifically focuses on social media as a whole and its drawbacks. His exhibit had various canvases filled with company names, such as Facebook and Twitter, or even bank names. He also had replica missiles facing four different ways symbolizing the ways people commit suicide in response to various negative influences of social media. The most intriguing part about all of his work was that all of it was up to interpretation. The missile could really represent anything the viewer wished and the social media names could be replaced by the viewer too.

I thoroughly enjoyed this First Friday, even more than the last one, because the art I was able to observe this week was more relatable to society today. The dollars were a great way for spectators to create art and simultaneously make a difference in the community. I would highly recommend visiting Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis next month.