After a mid-week day off, I still have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that it’s a Thursday. And not just any Thursday at that, but First Thursday. If you’re out among the throngs tonight, trying to hunt down some good art, you could do a lot worse than stopping by to see the following shows:

Soft at Tilt, 625 NW Everett, #106
Kristan Kennedy guns for the title of Hardest Working Woman in Portland with this exhibition that she juried, featuring TJ Norris, Aaron Bowles, and Eva Speer, whose painting is pictured here:

David Eckard @ Mark Woolley, 128 NE Russell
Eckard’s artistic development has been a joy to watch since I moved here: With every outing, he builds upon his previous works, filling in gaps, reconciling his different interests, and developing a hugely ambitious body of work. In his latest show, painting and sculpture collide head on in playful new ways.

Michelle Ross @ Elizabeth Leach, 417 NW 9th
Ross has been one of my favorite abstractionists for years now, as her paintings always seem headed toward screechingly ugly ends, but then swerve into a sort of peverse refinement the more you study them. Her new work looks quite different, with a lot of architectural influences, so I’m very curious to check them out.