A dozen Vale Avenue businesses will open their doors together on the first Friday of each month under a new gallery night launched this week, an effort organizers say was directly inspired by the strong sales at muralist Ines Carrizo's recent solo show at Ember & Ash Gallery.
The gallery night, organized under the banner “First Friday Vale,” launched this week with a dozen participating businesses along the corridor staying open past their usual hours to display work from local artists, several of them borrowed directly from the roster that filled Ember & Ash Gallery’s recent solo exhibit of muralist Ines Carrizo’s studio paintings. Gallery owner Nadia Kessler, who helped organize the effort alongside the Bellwater Chamber of Commerce, said Carrizo’s strong opening-weekend sales convinced several skeptical merchants the idea was worth trying.
“When people saw how many folks came out on a weeknight just to see paintings, and then stayed to buy coffee and books afterward, that was the pitch that finally worked,” Kessler said. “I’d been asking merchants on this street to try something like this for two years. It took Ines selling a third of a show in two days to get everyone to say yes.”
A test for evening foot traffic
Theresa Nakamura, executive director of the Bellwater Chamber of Commerce, said the chamber provided modest seed funding for the first several installments, covering shared marketing costs and a small stipend for participating artists, in hopes of building steady evening foot traffic along a corridor that has historically emptied out after typical retail hours.
“Vale Avenue does great during the day, especially with the farmers market and the lunch crowd,” Nakamura said. “Evenings have always been the gap. If this can turn one Friday a month into a genuine destination, that’s real revenue for these businesses that they aren’t seeing right now.”
I’ve run a bookstore on this street for twenty years and I was skeptical this would bring in anyone who wasn’t already going to shop here anyway. The first Friday proved me at least partly wrong, and I’m willing to keep proving myself wrong for a few more months.
Vale Avenue merchant participating in First Friday Vale
Not every merchant is convinced yet
Organizers said turnout for the inaugural event was encouraging but modest, with an estimated 600 to 800 attendees moving between participating storefronts over the course of the evening. Several merchants who declined to join this month’s launch said they wanted to see sustained turnout, rather than a single strong debut, before committing staff time and inventory to future installments.
Kessler acknowledged that skepticism directly. “I don’t blame anyone for wanting to see this work more than once before they change their Friday night staffing,” she said. “A good first night proves the concept. It doesn’t prove the concept every single month, and I know that’s the actual bar we have to clear.”
Organizers said future installments will rotate featured artists among painters, muralists, photographers and sculptors from across the city, with an emphasis on artists who have not previously had gallery representation on Vale Avenue. Nakamura said the chamber will track foot-traffic and sales data from participating businesses over the next several months to determine whether continued seed funding is warranted.
Ledger & Leaf Books, one of the dozen participating storefronts, hosted a small photography exhibit alongside its regular shelves for the launch event and reported some of its strongest single-evening sales in recent memory, according to staff at the store. The Millhouse Café, another participant, extended its hours for the night and displayed work from a Foundry Row ceramicist on tables usually reserved for coffee service.
Nakamura said the chamber deliberately paired newer participants like the café and bookstore with Kessler’s gallery, hoping the credibility of an established art venue would ease the reputational risk for businesses that had never displayed art before. “Nobody wants to be the first bookstore on the block to try something like this and have it fall flat,” Nakamura said. “Pairing them with a gallery that already had proof of concept made that first step a lot smaller.”
- First Friday Vale launched this week with a dozen participating Vale Avenue businesses.
- Organizers estimated 600 to 800 attendees at the inaugural event.
- The Chamber of Commerce is providing seed funding and will track foot-traffic data over several months before deciding on continued support.
Kessler said she hopes the effort eventually becomes self-sustaining without chamber support, pointing to similar gallery-night programs in other cities that grew from modest seed funding into merchant-run traditions. “I’d love for this to be something Vale Avenue just does now, the way the farmers market just happens every week without anyone questioning whether it’s worth the trouble,” she said. “We’re a long way from that. But a long way from something is still further along than not having started at all.”
The next First Friday Vale is scheduled for next month, with organizers planning to add several more participating storefronts if turnout data from the launch event holds up under closer review.