The making of The Document. Photo provided by {Cre8} SpaceStudioGallery.Not only is it the start of a brand new season, it’s almost the first Friday night in October — so clear your schedule, everyone’s having an opening!
>> On Saturday, all you bastards better head down to the Marie Reed Learning Center in Adams Morgan and mingle with the best of indie craft. For the seventh year running, Crafty Bastards, presented by the City Paper, returns to bring all the handmade goodness — like all your favorite Etsy shops coming to one convenient location — and you even get to meet the bastards who make it all, including Jay McCarroll (Project Runway‘s first-ever winner). Arrive early, bring lots of spending money (but pay your rent, first) and friends to help carry all your purchases and stick around awhile — learn a new skill in Demo Square, the Hello Craft Make Something Awesome Area. Take advantage of the free bicycle valet courtesy of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association. Don’t forget about the ever-popular B-Boy Battle! Returning to the Performance Pit for the sixth year, these skilled and witty breakdancers compete for crowd support and bragging rights. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
>> Tonight is opening night for SPLEEN, a collaborative art installation by multi-media artist ART CARGO (Jacqueline Levine), sculptor Oreen Cohen and ceramicist Sarah Allison that extends until Saturday at the vacant retail space in The Moderno building (12th and U Streets, NW). SPLEEN vents the dynamic, tense relationship between man’s destructive nature and the environment’s direct response to it. Tonight, 7 p.m. to 12 a.m., Friday and Saturday, 5 p.m. to 12 a.m. Free.
>> On Thursday, spend an Artful Evening at Industry Gallery and Conner Contemporary. These neighboring galleries will host WALA‘s Cocktail Hour & Fashion Preview, mixing art and fashion with attorneys and artists. Free for WALA members, $10 for everyone else. RSVP. 6 p.m.
>> Tonight and tomorrow, breakdancing extends beyond street dancing and becomes a new vector for the creation of visual art at {Cre8} SpaceStudioGallery. The result of over four years’ work, artistic skill and athleticism, The Document is a collaborative show featuring large-scale 2-D canvas and panel paintings created exclusively using breakdancing actions by Curtis Alia, Alex Meiners, Bat Thomas Canavan, Geoffrey “Toyz” Chang, Peter Chang and Brandon Hill. Free, but RSVP. 7 to 11 p.m. both nights.
