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Yep, you heard me right. Despite the economy and the generally tumultuous state of the world right now, it’s a really good time to be an art lover. Our capacity to appreciate art has never been better. Aside from great websites where artists can share their work with an ever-expanding core of collectors and art fans (ahem), opportunities to see art in person just seem to be proliferating rapidly.

Take this story in USA Today on art in airports. What could be better when you’re in mid-baggage schlep than feasting your eyes on a little aesthetic treat? The offerings run the gambit of styles and mediums – what a good way to introduce art into people’s lives.

Installation by Ken Ragsdale | Image: USA Today

In Albany, a series of installations by seven artists entitled “Keeping Time” focuses on our complicated relationship with nostalgia.

Arcs created by Melanie Walker & George Peters | Image: USA Today

At Jacksonville International Airport, artists Melanie Walker & George Peters created a site-specific installation. The arcs invoke the flight paths not only of airplanes, but also of the many birds in the area.

William LaChance "Slipstream" | Image: USA Today

Lambert-St. Louis International Airport’s Public Art and Culture Program commissioned nine artists to create glass screens to be displayed in the terminals.

Sara McCormick "Infinite Creature" | Image: USA Today

Portland, Oregon’s airport art melds math and art with a fractal exhibit.

There’s more to see in the gallery on the USA Today site. I’d finish this post up with one of my usual “Get out there and check out some art” rallying cries, but I’m not sure that’ll work in this case. Maybe I’ll just say, “Get out there, and check out some art when you come across it” – because you will, and it’s awesome.

Image: www.fbgartgallery.com

If you’re looking for a creative New Year’s resolution, consider adding a First Friday Art Walk to your monthly calendar. Increasingly, art walks are showing up in cities across the U.S. What is an art walk you ask? Well, it’s pretty simple: It’s just like going to a few galleries in a given city by yourself, only you’re not by yourself.

Image: www.oaklandgrown.org

Many metropolitan areas have embraced the concept of monthly art appreciation as a means of getting people out and into galleries and businesses throughout town. Here in my hometown, Portland, Maine (Google “first friday art walk” – we’re first!), First Friday is a big deal. Even in the dead of winter — and I do mean very, very dead… like 4 degrees dead — the streets are packed with people when the first night of the first weekend of the month rolls around.

Image: www.burlingtoncityarts.com

As evidenced by these posters from other FFAW’s across the country, we’re not alone. For lack of a better term, making a trip to the galleries into an event really fosters a lot of local art dialog. Galleries catch on quick and schedule exhibitions to coincide with First Fridays, people come from far and wide anticipating a great night of socializing, and local businesses reap the rewards.

Image: www.coastalcompanion.com

With a little help from Google, you too might be able to enjoy a local art walk. It’s not always first Friday, sometimes it’s last Friday or First Thursday, but it’s a guaranteed good time regardless. A lot of cities provide monthly maps of participating venues, and be sure to consult your local weeklies for a breakdown of what’s coming up exhibition-wise. If we can have fun appreciating art in the middle of winter here in Maine, you can do it in your hometown, too. It’s a great way to kick off the New Year, and beyond.

If you happen to be headed to Santa Fe in the next few months, you are one lucky chili pepper. The unique combination of food, landscape, and the smell of piñon in the air makes New Mexico one of my very favorite places.

Raymond Pettibon "Sunday Night and Saturday Morning" 2005

Sure, there’s all the usual good stuff to see in Santa Fe: Museum of International Folk Art, Canyon Road, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, etc. But, this season be sure not to miss SITE Santa Fe’s Eighth International Biennial Exhibition, The Dissolve.

Dziga Vertov "Soviet Toys" 1924

According to The Dissolve‘s website, “A paradigm shift in contemporary art is rare and hard to recognize at its inception, but that is what curators Sarah Lewis and Daniel Belasco have done in The Dissolve.”

Ezra Johnson "What Visions Burn" 2006

“The curators will present a new sensibility in the art of our time, a mingling of up-to-the-minute technology and traditional visual arts (painting, drawing, and sculpture) with dance, music, and film. The fundamental form of this new work is animation, uniting the technological (the camera) with the hand-made (drawing).”

Cindy Sherman "Doll Clothes" 1975

“The Dissolve will trace the development and reinterpretation of moving image techniques in wonderfully surprising juxtapositions.”

Martha Colburn "Myth Labs" 2008

George Griffin "Viewmaster, a digital mutoscope ' 1976

Be sure to check this exhibit out and report back to us how you liked it here on WallSpin. And while you’re in town, swing by the Tune-Up Cafe too, I hear the food is fantastic!

On view through January 2nd, 2011. SITE Santa Fe 1606 Paseo de Peralta Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501

If you’re headed to New York this month, congratulations! You’ve missed the peak of the hot weather and there are some good art shows to catch. Of course, this is only a fraction of the exhibits New York has to offer, but if I were in New York this month, this is where you’d find me. If you visit any of these exhibits, or others you think are worth a peek, let us know about them here on WallSpin.

Demetrius Oliver at The High Line

• Demetrius Oliver at the High Line opens September 7 at 6:30pm: Demetrius Oliver‘s Jupiter will be installed on a 25-by-75-foot billboard adjacent to the High Line at West 18th Street. Jupiter features five round photographs exposing mysterious acts and props, but lacking a human presence. Set against a solid, black background, each photograph resembles a planet floating in a night sky, an association reinforced by how they appear to be incrementally rotating in space. Live musical performances and stargazing from the High Line will accompany the piece. Artist Blanche Bruce and multiple groups of student musicians will perform “Jupiter” by John Coltrane on September 7, 18, 21, and October 2, 2010. Additionally, Oliver will join the New York chapter of the Amateur Astronomers Association on the High Line on September 21, 2010 to celebrate both the autumnal equinox and the Jupiter opposition — the day Earth passes between the Sun and Jupiter, making the distant planet most clearly visible.

Showtime SHO House: Weeds Lounge by Jason Oliver Nixon and John Loecke

• Showtime SHO House 2010 opens September 7: Step into the only multimedia showhouse of its kind with Showtime House 2010. Three penthouses, atop Manhattan’s iconic Cassa Hotel and Residences, have been transformed into show-stopping rooms of modern design inspired by seven Showtime original series: The Borgias, The Big C, Weeds, Californication, Dexter, Nurse Jackie, and United States of Tara. Bringing the offbeat characters of Showtime to life with style, wit and drama is a group of trendsetting designers and architects including this month’s Zatista Guest Curator: Jason Oliver Nixon.

Kiki Smith, Messenger III at the Brooklyn Museum

• Kiki Smith: Sojourn at the Brooklyn Museum ends September 12: Since the 1970s, Kiki Smith has created an impressive body of work relating to the physical and emotional experiences of women. Her new site-specific installation at the Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, titled Sojourn, was inspired by a significant 18th-century needlework by Prudence Punderson, The First, Second and Last Scenes of Mortality. Via a range of Smith’s cast objects, sculpture, and works on paper, the exhibit explores milestones of female artists, from creative awakening to death. -Angela Ashman, Village Voice

Andy Warhol, Rorschach Image at the Brooklyn Museum

• Andy Warhol: The Last Decade at the Brooklyn Museum ends September 12: Andy Warhol: The Last Decade is the first U.S. museum survey to examine the late work of American artist Andy Warhol (1928–1987). Encompassing nearly fifty works, the exhibition reveals the artist’s vitality, energy, and renewed spirit of experimentation. During this time Warhol produced more works, in a considerable number of series and on a vastly larger scale, than at any other point in his forty-year career. It was a decade of great artistic development for him, during which a dramatic transformation of his style took place alongside the introduction of new techniques.

David LaChapelle: American Jesus, Paul Kasmin Gallery

• David LaChapelle: American Jesus, Paul Kasmin Gallery ends September 18: If you saw that Rolling Stone cover of Lady Gaga against a bright pink backdrop, wearing a bubble dress and with frizzed-out hair, then you’re familiar with the work of photographer David LaChapelle. LaChapelle, known for his outlandish and larger-than-life images of celebrities, now has a show at Paul Kasmin Gallery called American Jesus, with the martyr played by none other than Michael Jackson. In one, Jackson lies across the lap of a modern-day hippie Jesus in a forest; in another, titled Beatification, a ghostly white Jackson stands beside the Virgin Mary with a dove and a clock in his hand. Others making an appearance in this show: Naomi Campbell and the devil—though not as the same person. -Araceli Cruz,Village Voice

Rivane Neuenschwander: All The Little Things at The New Museum

• Rivane Neuenschwander: A Day Like Any Other, The New Museum ends September 19: Rivane Neuenschwander, who hails from Brazil, is more of a spiritual healer than an artist. Her show A Day Like Any Other showcases her conceptualism in painting, photography, film, sculpture, installation, collaborative actions, and participatory events. But here’s why we’re really going: “I Wish Your Wish” is a wall full of hundreds of “faithful” colorful silk ribbons with wishes on them written by visitors from past projects. Visitors will be invited to remove a ribbon, tie it to their wrist, and replace it with a new wish written on a slip of paper because, according to tradition, their wishes are granted when the ribbons wear away and fall off. And in her piece “First Love,” a police sketch artist will sit with visitors and listen as visitors describe the faces of their first loves; he will then produce portraits of these “first loves” to adorn the walls of the gallery for the duration of the exhibition. We can’t wait! -Araceli Cruz,Village Voice