Friday, August 1, beginning at 4 p.m., galleries and art museums throughout Rockland will celebrate the fourth First Friday Art Walk of the 2025 season.

Below is a listing of some of the openings taking place throughout Rockland for this month’s event. Descriptions are provided by Rockland Main Street, Inc.

• Art Space Gallery (405 Main Street) will be open from 4 to 7 p.m., showcasing works by Hannah Nelsbach, Sandra Leinonen Dunn, Joan Wright, and Roger Barry in their front room. Art Space is a Co-Op gallery featuring the works of 17 members.

• The Farnsworth Art Museum (16 Museum Street) will open its doors free of charge from 5 to 7 p.m. It will offer light summertime refreshments while featuring live music by The Maine Groove, with members David Clarke, Stan Polanski, Tom Oldakowski, and Phelan Gallagher playing jazz standards and popular classics. 

Their two featured exhibitions are:

-In Focus: The Figure Today. The new exhibition in the museum’s James Gallery presents a dynamic exploration of the figure in contemporary practice, anchored by major recent acquisitions.

-Focus: Early American Art. This exhibition invites visitors to the Nevelson Gallery to delve into the Museum’s exceptional holdings of American art from the 18th to early 20th century.

• Caldbeck Gallery (12 Elm Street) will be open from 5 to 7 p.m., and will feature a two-person show: Katherine Bradford and Anna Dibble; as well as a Melanie Essex Solo Show: Heavy Weather. Also showing are What’s Going On, with new works by Dan Dowd; Selections by John Walker; and Selections by Alan Bray.

• Blue Raven Gallery (374 Main Street) will be open from 5 to 7 p.m. Blue Raven Gallery represents beautifully executed contemporary artwork from a diverse group of established artists. They value work that is innovative, that presents the artist's unique voice, and that engages its viewer intellectually, emotionally, and visually. Blue Raven prides themselves in assisting their clients in making their house a home.
  

• Archipelago, Island Institute’s store and gallery (386 Main Street) will be open from 5 to 7 p.m. They will feature the opening of an exhibition entitled Poetry of Place, a show of encaustic paintings by Hélène Farrar. Encaustic painting is an ancient painting technique developed in Egypt, which combines beeswax, damar resin, and pigments to give it color. “These paintings represent part of a year's work devoted to exploring the landscape surrounding and reaching beyond Manchester and Rockland, Maine.” Of her work, Hélène says: “Drawing from my memory, printed resources and studio process, I engaged with place as a structure to play, to scrape, reapply, draw into and splatter the ancient of encaustic (hot, beeswax paint). These places are known to me intimately as I walked, sat with, and lingered in them repeatedly. My hope is that you can "sit with" these paintings yourself and find them as a means to meditate.” 

Rockland Main Street, Inc., is a focused partnership of residents, businesses, and local government that enhances and protects the unique sense of place and economic vitality of Downtown Rockland, Maine. More information is available at www.rocklanddowntown.com/