Broome County Arts Council Presents May’s First Friday

Broome County Arts Council (BCAC) is pleased to invite you to the May’s First Friday Art Walk on May 1st, 2026, from 6-9 pm, with some locations having varying hours (details below). Most exhibitions are free and open to the public.

Patrons can now receive a special $5 event parking rate for six hours (4pm-10pm) at the new Water Street Parking Garage. For more information, visit our website.

This month’s First Friday participating open galleries and creative spaces include 12 locations with 2 pop-up venues:

• Trolley Tours: The Trolley Tour is running. Trolleys are free, and you can ride them from the Phelps Mansion at 6pm & 7pm for transportation to all exhibition spaces.
• Pop-Up! Artists For Change: Homegrown: A Collaborative Exhibition and Live Screen Printing Event with Zappia’s & Artists for Change featuring Brielle Sarkisian, Alec Pomuchynsky, Kylee Cunningham, Anna Faulkner, Eric Maruscak @ Deep State 214 State Street. Homegrown is an exhibition and event that highlights Broome County artists in both their personal practices, and in the workforce. With lifelong roots in Vestal, Johnson City, and Chenango Bridge, these artists connected (and some reconnected) at Zappia’s, a local custom apparel business that specializes in in-house screen printing, graphic design, embroidery, and heat transfers. Each artist has a unique background in fine art, whether in printmaking, painting & drawing, or digital design that they were able to play to their strengths at Zappia’s to produce custom apparel with precision and creativity. This event brings these talents out of the production room for the community to witness the printing process behind the finished shirts, while also showcasing each artist’s personal creative endeavors. In collaboration with Broome County Artists for Change, we have come together to host a t-shirt fundraiser and art exhibition to raise money for VINES, a local grassroots community gardens organization, as we head into the warmth of gardening season. (6pm-9pm).
• The Artisan Gallery: The Flower Show. Sponsored by Binghamton Agway, BCAC is pleased to celebrate the arrival of spring with a vibrant display of artistic expression at the annual Flower Show. This eagerly anticipated group exhibition showcases a diverse collection of visual artworks celebrating florals, nature, and new life. The Flower Show was inspired several years ago by a visit to the Philadelphia Flower Show in 2019. We invite artists to enter up to 2 pieces that reflect Spring, renewal, floral, the emergence of new life!  It has become a mainstay exhibition, favored by all! We look forward to this exhibition after the long, hard Southern Tier winters.This year, fifty-seven talented regional artists have interpreted the theme of florals in a variety of styles and mediums with one Best in Show prize awarded. Join us for an opening reception on First Friday, May 1 from (6-9PM).  We are featuring a retail artist of the month.  The featured artist will be invited to TABLE during the First Friday reception from 6-9 PM.  (They will be located at my desk during the reception.)  They will sell some of their exclusive items that night only.  This month’s featured retail artist is Kathleen Wiktor, who is a jewelry creator as well as a well known “Domestic Arts” instructor in our Pursuit program. In addition, we will be offering a special Mothers Day sale featuring 10% off any jewelry item in Artisan Gallery’s stock.  All jewelry is handmade by local artisans.
• Artful Child Gallery: The Discovery Center Life in Color (6pm-9pm).
• Atomic Toms: Atomic Jam. Listen to live music by local performers. (5pm-9pm).
• The Bundy – 3rd Floor Gallery: La Petite Mort. Photography by Sarah Vahaplar. Throughout the course of our lives, we experience changes, which affect us so deeply, that in many ways, it feels as though a death of sorts has occurred. Whether it be the ending of a relationship, moving from an area which you have grown to call home or even the actual death of a loved one, each represent an irrevocable shift which in turn, inevitably changes us. In this series entitled, ‘La Petite Mort,’ deceased creatures are represented, honored and immortalized through the use of a flatbed scanner. As with these lives which have been lost, the small deaths we experience should also be remembered and enshrined as part of our life’s journey. In French, ‘la petite mort,’ literally translates the, “the little death,” but is also a term referring to an orgasm; representing the beginning of life. Although loss of life and life changes are certain, it is pertinent that life will evolve, regardless of our wants. Inevitably, new life will always follow a prior death. (6pm-9pm).
• The Cooperative Gallery 213: Follow the Water Barbara Bernstein & Regina Losinger. Barbara Bernstein: After a career spent writing computer software, I moved to a farmhouse in upstate New York where I have the time and space to devote myself to my lifelong desire to make art. I renovated my barn and set up a kilnforming studio in 2001. I have studied glass-making at the Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass, Urban Glass, Pittsburgh Glass, and at the Pilchuck Glass School. In 2010, Schiffer Press included my cast glass sculptures in the anthology “Creative Glass.” My sculptures celebrate the diversity of the human form using glass. My sculptures are often abstract organic forms depicting the curves of the female body. These curves are like the rolling hills of the Southern Tier, and some of my pieces depict the body as landscape. I pay particular attention to the lines made by the boundaries of the body as well as its masses. Glass is hard and the human form is soft; the body is warm and glass is cold. It might seem paradoxical to use glass to make art about people; but I like paradoxes.

Regina Losinger is a nature artist and photographer who paints in oils, acrylic, and watercolor, finding inspiration on wilderness paddles and in her gardens. Paintings and photographs inspired by the Adirondacks and Alaska with guest artist Ashlyn Kelley. (6-9pm)

• Anthony Brunelli Fine Arts: Main Gallery: Bruce Evans, Leeah Joo, Nadine Robbins, NFN Kalyan, Richard Heisler & Project Space: Safe Travels with Ariel Bullion Ecklund. Our Main Gallery exhibition features new arrivals and selections from a select group of our gallery artists.  Our Project Space will feature a new exhibition with artist, Ariel Bullion Ecklund titled “Safe Travels.”  Sculptural and 2-dimensional works will be included.  Ecklund is also the owner of Corners Gallery in Ithaca, NY.
• The Discovery Center of the Southern Tier: Together We Play The Creative Hive. Join us in May for an artful experience celebrating Together We Play! The Creative Hive will fill our gallery with inspiring art pieces from their talented young artists, alongside a special collaborative work that beautifully captures the spirit of unity! Come be a part of this joyful celebration of art, creativity, and community at The Discovery Center’s First Friday Art Show. It’s a perfect opportunity to connect, explore, and play together! (4pm-7pm).
• The Exhale Gallery @ Just Breathe: The Pattern with Artist Ella Lempert: The ability to view the world around you through an observant lens, a lens that can collect, develop, and connect, is just as important to artistry as technical abilities, if not more. In this show, Ella Lempert explores themes of nature and their overlap with technical design, chasing a common flow between them in reference to her own life experiences. Growing up in manhattan around 1800s artisanal architecture and wrought iron, collecting old tech and living in an age of wires and circuits, finding solace in the upstate trees, it’s all connected through intuitive design and sacred geometry. (6pm-9pm).
• The Roberson Museum: RESURGENCE with Alexandra Davis: In RESURGENCE, Alexandra Davis explores the intersections of time, memory, and human endeavor through intaglio prints on shaped plates in shifting configurations. Her compositions evoke fractured land masses drifting across vast geological time, placing human experience within the immense scale of the Earth’s history. Admission to the museum will be half-priced ($4). (12pm-9pm).
• Phelps Mansion Museum: Celebrating 10 Years of the Art of Science at Binghamton University. Explore an exhibit featuring images from 10 years of the Binghamton University Art of Science competition. The Art of Science is a contest hosted by the Office of Research Advancement that allows Binghamton students, postdocs, faculty, and staff to share the beauty of science through photographs and images that describe some aspect of research captured visually. The School of the Arts will join with Cinema projections onto the windows of the Phelps, live music, and a stereoscopic 3D performance. Light refreshments will be served.The mansion is open for viewing from 6pm-9pm. FREE Admission.
• The Lost Dog Cafe: Women of the Cigar Factories—Broome County Historical Society Photography.

The Broome County Arts Council is proud to continue First Friday with the generous support of the Broome County Government and City of Binghamton. Updated exhibition information and a Google Map are available on our website: https://broomearts.org/in-the-community/first-friday/. Are you hosting arts and cultural events during First Friday and located in Downtown Binghamton? Reach out to Broome County Arts Council to learn more about joining the First Friday Art Walk program!

CONTACT: Suzanne Richardson, Community Outreach Coordinator, Broome County Arts Council
P: 607-723-4620 ext 102 | E: srichardson@broomearts.org