Art and Cookies

The owners of the Bakery Gallery (517 East 18th Street, 816-308-7892) offer fresh-baked cookies, prepared in an on-site oven, at every opening. It’s fitting for the building, which housed a bakery in the ’40s. That alone should provide enough incentive to make the Bakery part of any First Friday itinerary. Once lured to the site by the confectionary aromas, visitors can peruse more than 25 works from 7 to 11 tonight during the gallery’s one-year anniversary silent auction. Some highlights: a Joe Hoskins oil painting in which an expressionist character unleashes a Munch-like scream under what appears to be an electrified propeller beanie; a Sean O’Neil silkscreen that pairs the term “Protect and Serve” with two decidedly unfriendly officers; Virginia Bonner’s “Undisputed Company,” in which a character vaguely reminiscent of ’70s Electric Company-style animation frets about a giant spider; and Skyler Bieberly’s gnarly, gore-encrusted-skull lithograph.