After last month’s ceramics, April’s First Friday feels a little less fragile

Though art provides plenty of future shock, some months’ shows suggest instead a look over our shoulders. April, for instance, is a chance to time-travel back, back, back to … March 2016, when the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts’ annual conference swept into virtually every art space in Kansas City.

This First Friday, April 1, a number of galleries are taking a post-conference breath, extending their shows to allow a more leisurely experience. Among these: the Kansas City Artists Coalition (201 Wyandotte), the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center (2012 Baltimore), La Esquina (1000 West 25th Street), Plug Projects (1613 Genessee), the American Jazz Museum (1616 East 18th Street), Belger Crane Yard Studios (2011 Tracy), Beggar’s Table (2010 Baltimore), Garcia Squared Contemporary (115 West 18th Street), the new Kansas City Art Institute Grand Arts Gallery (1819 Grand), Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art (2001 Baltimore) and Todd Weiner Gallery (115 West 18th Street). The latter has Ole Lislerud’s Image as Metaphor, and a look through the other spaces’ websites and social media provides enough list-making material to make you feel almost as overwhelmed as you did last month.

To delve further into the past, head to Plenum Space Gallery (504 East 18th Street), where Rif Raf Giraffe puts up a continuation of his previous exhibition, Taking Flight, called — what else? — Cruising Altitude. The show (which opens with a 6-10 p.m. reception April 1) tranports us back to the 1990s to examine that decade’s repetitions of certain earlier fashions and cultural obsessions. Here, again, are the last years before 9/11 and the widespread use of the Internet. If you remember O.J. Simpson’s white Bronco, Princess Diana’s funeral or, you know, pay phones, here’s an evening to recall as well what it was like not to react to those things on social media. Revel in the relative calm before returning to the final destination of modern-day life.

Elsewhere in the Crossroads, Fernando Achucarro, a native of Paraguay who calls Kansas City home, opens a solo show at the Jones Gallery (1717 Walnut). His paintings capture life in moments of lightness and darkness, in spaces that change in brightness depending on the time of day but also host intense emotions. The opening reception is from 5 to 9 p.m. April 1.

The Bedouins of the Palestinian-Israel region live amid an ever-changing political, social and environmental landscape. The Mid-America Arts Alliance (2018 Baltimore) brings artwork and artifacts from the desert to the Crossroads in an ExhibitsUSA preview of Traditional Arts of the Bedouin, ahead of a national tour. The opening, from 6 to 8 p.m., includes items that bridge the divide between aesthetic and utilitarian object-making.

Night Blooms Darkroom and Book Store (529 Southwest Boulevard) is showing off work that was printed in-house. Megan Karson’s photography makes up Wanderbound; from 6 to 10 p.m. April 1, you can take a trip around the world with this self-described compulsory traveler, who writes: “Immersing ourselves in other cultures allows room in our hearts and our minds for a more sympathetic and compassionate relationship with all of humanity.”

Ready for the future? Vulpes Bastille (1737 Locust) is hosting a senior show of the Kansas City Art Institute’s Illustration Department, starting with a 6-9 p.m. opening April 1 that features live drawing and, organizers promise, “a whole lotta food.” The show is billed as an “explosive take on the traditional gallery show, exhibiting bold and multifarious approaches.” Grade the class of 2016 for yourself Friday night.

At Front Space (217 West 18th Street), the Turkey Creek Institute for Phenomenal Awareness has organized Floodplain Buyout, a series of interactive experiences opening 6-9 p.m. Friday, with additional “portal openings” through the end of April. The TCIPA was founded by Timothy Amundson to raise awareness about this watershed that exists entirely within an urban environment, near Interstate 35 in Johnson and Wyandotte counties. The portals will be activated 50 times during the exhibition and will transport participants to undisclosed locations along the creek through photography, sculpture and sound. The goal, Amundson writes, is to re-imagine “relationships between commerce, development, architecture, land-use and self.”

Mod Gallery & Space (1809 McGee) will be its usual raucous self from 5 to 10 p.m. today, with metal creations by Kyle Moody and Baker Medlock amid the sounds of DJ Ray Velasquez. The space has two doorways — and the one off the alley in back will feature artwork by Richard Day and music by Look at the Rabbits and VJ Surya.

A drawing station is open at Imagine That’s (2040 Central) second annual doodle exhibition, Scribble Assembly. You can create your own work and swap it with one on display created by one of the Imagine That artists.

At Hilliard Gallery (1820 McGee) is another annual throwdown, the International Human Form in Art show (opening 6-9 p.m. Friday). Figures of ourselves have been an obvious part of human-created work for at least 25,000 years and span every culture. Each culture, and even each person, depicts the human body in a different way, and there is great diversity represented among the contemporary artists selected and grouped together for this exhibition — media, techniques, beliefs and ideas about “beauty.”

Finally, the Late Show gallery (1600 Cherry) has paintings in oils, watercolors and oil pastels by Marcia Streepy. Her Overview opens with a 6-10 p.m. reception.