Our Picks Recommended

First Friday Art Show 

If you hit only one art spot this First Friday, see Stephanie Liner's haunting, ornate sculptures—including live models for one night only—at Artspace. In Momentos of a Doomed Construct, Liner mashes together clothing and furniture forms into Fabergé egg-like armatures that are as fascinating as they are unnerving. It's a rare opportunity to see them as they're intended, with living, breathing women inside of them, gazing back at you.

Flanders Gallery acknowledges the end of another work week with Make Ends Meet, a show of labor-intensive work by Jonathan Brilliant, Mathew Curran and Olek on display through July 21. Olek's public swathing of people and objects in bright crochet has prompted wide imitation. Curran's painstaking stencil images recall street art and woodcuts. Brilliant's large sculptural forms are made from cafe materials—to-go coffee lids, cup sleeves and bazillions of those wooden stirrers.

CAM Raleigh stays open until 10 p.m. with José Lerma's subtly subversive new show The Credentialist. In addition to four large doodle paintings, Lerma has covered the main floor with a carpet-collage portrait of King Charles II and constructed giant models of Puerto Rican puppets out of wadded photographic backdrop paper. Also check out the Teen Art Exhibition curated by CAM's team of high schoolers.

Elsewhere, Gallery C opens a show of oil paintings by Jimmy Craig Womble II. Womble's sharp pastoral-industrial eye turns country barns and urban buildings into architectures of light and color. Adam Cave Fine Art presents new atmospheric work by Will Goodyear that shows his growing interest in the state's historical politics. Lump opens Carne Estrada (yes, as in Erik), a multimedia exhibition by the St. Louis collective Totemic Wizard System that runs through June 30. Unless otherwise noted, events run 6–9 p.m.; visit venue websites for details. —Chris Vitiello