Finding First Friday with Lauren Farkas’ Art Maps

For Lauren Farkas, her art maps are a fascination. She weaves together drawing, painting and mixed media to create an authoritative guide to Knoxville’s First Friday circuit. Made for the moment, the maps illustrate where to visit during Knoxville’s monthly art hop.

Lauren publishes her maps on Substack, where subscribers help fund the project. Recently, the Arts & Culture Alliance began featuring Lauren’s art maps on First Friday at The Emporium on the 100 Block.

“The very first tiny colored pencil one I made for myself and shared on a whim,” Lauren wrote of her original First Friday map, in February 2023. She utilized ROYGBIV color order to plan her route from red to violet through the evening. Since then, her maps have explored a range of media and ideas: “Each month, I publish a map (could be drawing, print, wearable, ephemeral, installation, who knows!) that serves as both a guide and a gesture—an invitation to engage, connect and take part in a creative culture that thrives on curiosity.”

Lauren said that mapping presents one big challenge: “figuring out how to get the map in front of the people who want to see it.”

She started sharing the project on Instagram but moved to Substack after growing frustrated with Meta policies. Lauren said it has been special watching the maps grow over the past three years. She has received strong feedback and continues to be encouraged by people who want to see the next one. “It’s a big charge meeting someone and they say, ‘Oh, you’re the one who makes the maps,’” Lauren said.

Casey Fox, director of impact & development at the Arts & Culture Alliance, said, “Lauren is a well-known member of our arts community, and we were thrilled when she started creating her First Friday maps and sharing them on Instagram. She graciously tagged all the featured galleries, so we were in the loop from the beginning.”

The Arts & Culture Alliance began featuring Lauren’s maps in September 2025, with her “A Map is Something You Walk Through,” a beaded curtain art map. Casey continued, “We love having Lauren’s maps here at the Emporium and hope the partnership can continue. As the Emporium is often people’s first stop on First Friday, it’s a great opportunity to promote exhibitions and openings across Knoxville to a large crowd of art lovers.”

Interconnectivity with people and plants guides Lauren’s work as an artist and a teacher, and her love for nature keeps her grounded to her focus on how everything is connected. Lauren’s other fascination is “kudzu.” Lauren said she feels a deep relationship with kudzu. “It’s so complex, and the properties are not easy to see. You have to use all of your senses to understand the plant.” In her ecollage art she utilizes the plant itself as a canvas, medium and subject. But her work with ecollage is also about conflict. Lauren explained, “I examine the conflict between native and invasive species on our local soil, and learn something beautiful about the players in that conflict in the process.” 

Aside from her own work, Lauren is the only art teacher at L&N STEM Academy, located in the former rail passenger station at the north end of World’s Fair Park. “So I teach anyone who wants to learn,” she said.

Community is primary in her art, and she imparts that connection to the young people in her classroom. She exposes new ways to accomplish their goals and allows them to experiment, all in the name of art. Lauren said, “I love my job — coming here and teaching the students to express their ideas and how to communicate them.”

Her focus is on helping students find answers to the problems they encounter as they create. “I love my job so much, and I wish I had twice the capacity to pour into the work. In a perfect world I’d have smaller classes and more time to plan and give high-quality feedback — but the system of education isn’t set up that way, at least not yet,” Lauren said. The perfect life for Lauren is “close to the life I’m living, but with more sleep,” she said.

Many times, Lauren found her process as she helped a student create what they had in mind. Her studio is split between the classroom and her home. “My classroom gives me the ability to work with a wide array of materials. It’s helpful to work here so I can show my students the process,” Lauren said. Working in the classroom also allows her more time to concentrate on the process and the project.

“If I were not doing maps, I would work with more traditional mediums, but the mapping allows me to be a better educator,” Lauren continues. Some of her favorite maps were constructed from infrastructure itself. “One map, I carved the roads into an old metal road sign. For another, I used peeling thermoplastic to make the lines,” Lauren explained.

Lauren lives in South Knoxville and is originally from Franklin, Tennessee. She attended UT, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting and drawing and a master’s degree in art education. She has participated in community garden projects at Beardsley Farm and Pond Gap Elementary School, and loves to bike, garden and make art. “I love those days when I bounce around Knoxville and see the people I know. I love a deep connection with people. I love a deep conversation.”

Personal spirituality, for Lauren, is the process of seeking solutions to core problems. Lauren explained, “I found that disconnection is something I struggle with, so my solution is to notice and draw a connection.” Lauren focuses her energy on making pointed connections in her teaching philosophy.

She is inspired by Wendie Love, an award-winning art teacher at Farragut High School who also teaches at Mighty Mud in South Knoxville. Wendie’s mantra is: Stay in one place and do good work. “If I can stay here in Knoxville and consistently do good work for the students and pass on that philosophy,” Lauren said she would feel accomplished. “Fostering expression and free will — being consistent — giving people permission to find solutions — connecting people.”

Lauren participates in a cohort of female artists in which each artist has 15 minutes to discuss an idea or process, helping them dissect what they are doing and why they are doing it. 

“I would like to see the artist community grow and expand that conversation — with more local artists showing around town, but also bringing national artists to inspire what we are doing here and ignite the diverse things in Knoxville,” Lauren said.

“Every city can do more for artists, but especially Knoxville, because we have so much going for us. Outsiders might not think of high-level contemporary art when they think of our city … they might think of football and the mountains, but there are so many artists doing incredible work here, and I worry that if Knoxville doesn’t support them they will move to other places. If they aren’t able to afford a studio or show, that’s a big loss.”

Lauren added that she would also like to see more venues: “There have been some great spaces like Brown House, Cherry East, Fluorescent Gallery and Badwater Gallery.

For Lauren, it all comes down to affordable space for the community to thrive. “I have friends who are looking for studio space. It’s hard to find adequate spaces where the roof is not falling in, it’s too cold or there are critters,” she says. “Buildings are sitting empty, but the space is great. The city could grant artists temporary gallery space in empty buildings.”

Lauren has recently shown at the UT Downtown Gallery, The Emporium and the McGhee-Tyson Airport’s Art in the Airport.

View Lauren’s art map at The Emporium (100 S. Gay Street) this evening, March 5, from 5 – 9 p.m.