Tomorrow night is looking to be almost as jam-packed with art events as the First Thursday CAM opening ceremonies. The South Flores Arts District galleries, with the lone exception of Lone Star Studios, have moved their Second Saturday events to Thursday in order to avoid conflicting with Luminaria. FL!GHT is hosting a group show of heavy-hitters including Franco Mondini-Ruiz, Chuck Ramirez, Alejandro Diaz, and Andy Benavides. Down the hall in the One9Zero6 Gallery, Jesse Amado will have a solo show, while the SMART Art Project Space hosts Courtney Reid. Add in a couple of performances by Symphony musicians, and you have a hot bed of activity centered around 1906 S Flores.

But that's just the beginning. Lily's Cookies hosts The Cookie Jar Show, featuring four of San Antonio's best contemporary ceramic artists (Diana Kersey, Ryan Takaba, Wesley Harvey, and Dennis Smith), while a few blocks up McCullough Galeria Ortiz shows The Gallery 12, and just a bit further up the street Parchman-Stremmel opens the Gary Sweeney-curated romp, The Big Top. Nearby at Trinity University's Attic Theater, AtticRep holds the Forum Theatre Project on Love and Marriage.

And those are just my personal highlights. Check out the full Thursday run-down here (tip: you can see details for all of a single day's events by clicking the date number on the Calendar page).

Please join us for the official CAM kick-off openings and party tonight March 4 at Blue Star! Amalgamations 25: 28 Artists for 25 Great Years opens both tonight and tomorrow night March 5 at Blue Star from 6-9pm, along with many great shows in the many exceptional galleries in the complex. Check out Hills Snyder at Three Walls, Anita Valencia at Cactus Bra, Gary Wise at UTSA Satellite Space, and Marcy McChesney at Stella Haus, among many others! Ertan Torgul will be performing Phillip Glass's Strung Out at 6pm at Blue Star. Be there or be blue!

We just posted the details of our collaboration with the San Antonio Symphony. Throughout March, Symphony performers will give solo and small ensemble performances in contemporary art spaces all over the city. Click the "Symphony" tab above for more information.

The Contemporary Art Month Open Studio event is back!  Check the CAM Open Studios page to see the list of artists who will be opening their studios to the public, from 10 am to 4 pm on Sunday, March 7. Visitors will get to see work by the artists, finished and in-progress, and engage in discussion.  It's like a free backstage pass, letting you see how the art you like is made and giving you direct access to some of city's top creative talents.  More information about participating artists, as well as maps to their studios are available on the CAM Open Studios page.  Go there and plan your very own tour.

If you are an artist and you'd like to join in, and open your studio to the masses, it's not too late.  Click here to add your studio to the list.  There is no fee.

This weekend, Bihl Haus Arts is organizing the 3rd annual On and Off Fredricksburg Road Studio Tour in the Deco District. Over fifty artists will have their studios open on Saturday and Sunday, and there will be a special exhibit featuring all the artists tonight at Bihl Haus Arts. This is a great opportunity to see what goes on behind the scenes and discuss the artists' work and process. Click the link above to see all the artists involved and get more details.

There will also be another studio tour organized by CAM on March 7. This is a much looser project: we just gave the artists a date and they let us know who was interested. Unlike On and Off Fredricksburg Road, there's no catalog, no special exhibit, just a bunch of artists opening up their studios. See the list of studios here.

The Southwest School of Art and Craft has a slew of openings tonight (click the link to see all their listings), with artists like Vincent Valdez, Louis Vega Treviño, and Bruce Metcalf. These exhibits will be on view throughout CAM, along with a number of cool shows at other venues that will open in February or even January. Click the "Ongoing" tab above to see which exhibits on the calendar have already opened.

Last year, July CAM was put to sleep gently, to the sound of beating drums, cymbals, horns, and bells. But it didn't die forever. This year, celebrate with us the rebirth of CAM in its new incarnation: March.

The death parade was loud and bright, so get ready to make it look mournful by comparison with your craziest costumes and whatever you can find to play or bang on. Get in a celebratory mood, and meet up at:

4 PM, FEBRUARY 28, AT ROOSEVELT PARK
(between Lonestar Blvd & Grove, by the river)

We'll march down along the river to arrive at La Tuna bar for libations. Congratulations, it's a CAM!

Welcome to the new CAM website, with graphic design by Chuck Ramirez. The 2010 CAM calendar is now online, and will be available in the San Antonio Current throughout the month of March. It looks like CAM is starting early this year, with lots of events in February at the Southwest School of Art and Craft, David Shelton Gallery, Sala Diaz, and other spaces. But don't let that fool you... the official rebirth of CAM is on February 28 on the San Antonio River. Keep checking in as we highlight events on this page throughout next couple of months.

It’s hard to believe, but Contemporary Art Month is coming soon! The month-long contemporary art extravaganza is moving to March in 2010, which means it’s only three months away. We need your help to make sure all facets of San Antonio’s contemporary art community are represented. Because of the holidays, we are opening the calendar submission system a little early this year. Starting today, you can enter your exhibits, performances, and educational events on our website for inclusion in the 2010 CAM calendar. If you want to have your events listed in the print calendar in the San Antonio Current, be sure to have them in by January 15.

We’ve made a few changes since July. One of the biggest is that we are now accepting a new listing type: open studios. The CAM open studio day is Sunday, March 7, and any artist with a studio of some kind is encouraged to participate. There is no fee for this type of CAM listing.

We have also enabled image uploading capabilities for all listing types (not just exhibits), and you will be notified by email when your listings have been approved, instead of having to login to check your listings page. Finally, a map will be generated automatically for every venue and open studio listing.

If you submitted events in July, you already have an account. If you don’t have your password, you have two options. You can either dig up the email we sent you with your login information, or reset your password. The email should have a subject heading that reads “Account details for [your username] at Contemporary Art Month.” You can reset your password by visiting this page and entering your email address (or your username, if you remember it). If all else fails, please contact us and we can manually reset your password and/or update your email address.

As always, thank you for your continued support of CAM and San Antonio’s vibrant art community.

Contemporary Art Month is honored to work with the San Antonio Symphony to bring contemporary classical music to visual art venues all over the city. This project, which is still in the planning stages, will feature solo and small ensemble concerts by Symphony musicians throughout the month of March.

More details coming soon!