First Fridays is a FREE, self-guided monthly art walk throughout Wicker Park and Bucktown. You will find exhibition openings, local artist pop-ups, artist talks, and more each month as you explore the map below.

When: Every First Friday of the month

The next is September 4th from 6 - 8 PM

Where: Check out the map below!

Check out our lineup of local events and exhibition openings for First Friday on September 4th!

This month, enjoy a live performance from Phil Circle, Founder of Phil Circle Music, and his band during First Fridays!

Head to the Flat Iron Arts Building between 6-8 PM to enjoy their set and stop by local galleries along the way!

Flat Iron Arts Building

1579 N Milwaukee Ave

First Fridays at the Flat Iron!
6 - 9 PM

The guest exhibitors for September 4th are:
Local Moss Artist Yva Neal
Local artist Julia Pawlowska

And local sculptor Eric Helehrter

Open studios include:
#204: Photographer and vintage curator Leigha Wondergem
#344: The Phil Circle Music First Friday Open Mic Jam Session
#304: The Miniatures of Bree Flammini and Andrew Jarvis' sculpture "There is an Insurgent Reality Forming on The Third Floor of The Flat Iron Arts Building"

Jackson Junge Gallery

1389 N Milwaukee Ave

After Dark:

A Group Exhibition Illuminating Chicago's Nightlife

August 10th - September 27th

Jackson Junge Gallery is excited to present their third group exhibition of the year, AFTER DARK, featuring artwork that shines a light on nightlife in Chicago. The exhibition will feature the work of 28 artists local to the Chicagoland area. From the beginning of a big night out, to the eventful CTA ride home, AFTER DARK explores both the well-known and the hidden corners of Chicago after the sun has gone down.

AND

K-POP! ft. iri5

August 24th - September 20th

Jackson Junge Gallery presents K-POP!, a mini exhibition featuring Chicago-based artist iri5 known for her unexpected mixed media artwork made from cassette tape. A professional artist for almost 20 years, she has collaborated with Bruno Mars on his major music video “Just the Way You Are” and was the Official Artist for the Grammys in 2013. Sparked by her daughter’s love of K-pop, iri5 makes her return to art with a new series of portraits featuring artists of the music genre. Join in on the fun and share the incredible energy of K-pop fans with K-POP!

Tom Robinson Studio

2416 W North Ave

Check out Tom's wide array of works, including paintings, woodcuts, furniture, and more!

This month, featuring little Sculptures!

Flatline Gallery

1925 N Milwaukee Ave

Death By Landscape

September 4th - September 25th

Opening Reception SEPTEMBER 4th 6pm - 9pm

Flatline gallery presents, Death by Landscape, bringing together nine artists working across painting, sculpture, and kinetic systems to consider nature not as an exterior realm, but as a condition already inseparable from the technological, industrial, and human systems that attempt to contain it. The exhibition approaches ecology after the presumed distinction between the natural and the artificial has begun to collapse: nature as sustained collapse, as entropic runaway, as something that exceeds every boundary imposed upon it.
Preservation, extraction, contamination, extinction, infrastructure, and wilderness no longer occupy discrete territories; they have become mutually constitutive. The landscape is not a passive surface upon which these processes take place, but a record of their accumulation.
Rather than mourning the disappearance of some pristine nature that preceded human intervention, the works in the exhibition inhabit a post-natural ecology in which intervention has become an environmental condition. Ruin does not interrupt nature; it enters into its composition.

Featured artists:
Hope Barkov
Savannah Hodges
Fionn Kelly
Samantha Merrill
Zo Nicole Nielson
Lorenzo Osterheim
Jackie Pyles
Andrew Rutherdale
Eva Tellier

CSI Project Space

1632 N Milwaukee Ave

Whispers of the Unfamiliar

August 7 - September 4

Whispers from the Unfamiliar exhibit explores relationships with the unknown . . . the quiet, unfiltered thoughts that flutter internally before taking shape in the real world. Intuition perceives our surroundings and understanding of self long before our conscious mind constructs words to rationalize them. The unfamiliar whispers in silent moments, revealing hidden emotions, forgotten histories, and subtle echoes of understanding. It weaves narratives while we sleep and wakes us with instant clarity and purpose. By embracing this unconscious conversation, we uncover insight into our identities and the world we inhabit.

Curator, Stephanie Sailer

MarioInk

1441 N Ashland Ave

First Friday Tattoo Special! $50/$100 flat rate, Black & Grey design! Tonight only!

Fine art, hand painted clothing, custom vinyl figures, jewelry.

First person in after 6 PM will get a free tattoo!

Last Place on Earth

1526 N Ashland Ave

Creative clubhouse Last Place on Earth features their newest exhibition: “Outerbody”

On display until September 19th.

SoNa Chicago Contemporary Art

1527 N Ashland Ave

A Pied

1933 N Damen Ave

Heaven Gallery

1550 N Milwaukee Ave, #2

Knots brings together artists who use tying, looping, weaving, binding, and repetition as both material process and metaphor. Across sculpture, fiber, found objects, mathematical systems, bodily forms, and participatory performance, the exhibition explores the knot as a structure of connection and tension—something that holds, protects, restricts, remembers, and transforms.
 
Long used as tools of survival, craft, and labor, knots carry rich symbolic meanings. They can signify the power of unity while also suggesting pressure, obligation, and entanglement. Requiring both control and release, knots embody tension, resiliency, and the potential to unravel. For some artists, knots emerge through systems of geometry and organic forms; for others, they speak to the joy of family, heritage and community, the challenge of migration and the anxiety that simmers beneath it all. Together, the works reveal how individual strands become larger networks of relationships, histories, and shared experience.
 
By foregrounding the knot as both form and metaphor, the exhibition invites viewers to consider the forces that bind us, the structures that sustain us, and what must be loosened, repaired, or reimagined.

And so many more!

Questions? luke@wickerparkbucktown.com