The Darkness Is the Canvas
AltBar
1947 East Main St.
Mar 6, 6:00 pm - 10:00 pm

In this new body of work, Molly Darling returns to her shattered abstract style: a visual language built from fracture, lattice, and light, to explore a shift in perspective. Darkness is not something to escape. It is something to build upon.

Each painting begins in shadow. Black lines weave across the surface like roots, veins, or stained glass scaffolding. Color does not overpower the dark; it emerges because of it. Shapes emerge from depth. Light reveals structure rather than replacing it.

In a culture that rushes to illuminate and resolve, The Darkness Is the Canvas lingers in the in-between: asking what becomes visible when we stop trying to banish the dark and instead allow it to be the ground from which everything else rises.

As part of First Friday, visitors are invited to contribute to the Flower City Fragments Project through a communal 6×6 art-making activity — adding their own fragments to a shared evolving work. Together, we explore how individual pieces create collective structure.

The workshop portion of this event is part of Flower City Fragments.
For this project, 36 individual 6×6 artworks will be created, each printed with a small portion of the Rochester City logo. Participants are invited to visit one of six First Friday venues and make original artwork on their square while keeping the printed line visible.

When all the artworks are installed together within RoCo’s 6×6 exhibition this summer, they will connect to form a single, unified image of the iconic City logo built from art by fellow creative Rochestarians.

Click here to see all six events (updated as events come in).