Odds & Ends @ The End of the Week

The Albany Art Room is expanding its artistic offerings with the grand opening of a new 700-square-foot pottery room featuring six wheels and large new kiln. Classes and open studio time are available. Learn how to create with clay, glaze your original pieces or decorate ready-made items.

Following the ribbon-cutting for the new space at 5pm today, there will be tours, pottery demonstrations and refreshments in the new space from 5-9pm today in conjunction with the First Friday arts walk.

Thanks to Amy and Jim Furlong (again!) for this tip … Ksenya Simonova was the winner of Ukraine’s Got Talent. She creates sand painting animations that are simple and yet astonishingly poignant:

Sponsored by Local 845, the Jack Grace Band rumbles into the Piggy Bank in Beacon at 8pm tonight, serving up selections from their forthcoming scintillating CD, “Drinking Songs for Lovers.” The Martini Cowboy in Beacon? Yup, and it’s FREE.

As the featured artist at Upstate Artists Guild‘s new “Fresh Produce” exhibition, musician-artist Thomas D’Ambrose displays his captivating contemporary folk-art at the Guild’s Lark Street gallery in Albany, beginning with an opening reception from 6-9pm tonight. His collection of new paintings, illustrations and mixed media work depicts spectacular zoological creatures, incorporating such unorthodox elements as found canvases and vintage wall paper.

“As a totally self taught artist, I feel no pressure to follow any rules concerning my art,” D’Ambrose declares. “This, combined with a limited natural drawing ability, gives my work a child-like primitive innocence. Pressed for a label, I would have to describe my work as ‘Naive Primitive.'”

The exhibit runs through Friday, November 27.