As the summer tourist season winds down after Labor Day on Monday, First Friday goes out with a bang. Along with the usual gallery openings and another Paint In at the Homer Elks Lodge, openings this weekend include two ocean-themed art shows.

The Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies starts off its CoastWalk month with a show featuring the iconic XtraTuf rubber boot. The goal of art in “Still Walking the Walk” is to inspire people to see the connection between utilitarian boots and the marine environment. The show opens this week, and at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Harbor Office, CACS holds its kick-off for CoastWalk, with talks about marine debris and sign-up to monitor and clean Kachemak Bay beaches.

CACS several years ago also held a buoy art show. That theme continues at Alice’s Champagne Palace, with displays of decorated buoys done for the Alaska Marine Conservation Council’s upcoming Homer Halibut Festival, to be held Sept. 19-20. Artistic buoys will be auctioned then.

The Paint In, with artists inspired by the view of Kachemak Bay from the back deck of the Homer Elks Lodge, continues, this time with three artists painting simultaneously. Anchorage landscape artist Steve Gordon is joined by two of his University of Alaska Anchorage students.

Windows as theme and even media are featured in two shows, “The Past Thro Windows Calls to Me” by KN Goodrich at Bunnell Street Arts Center and “Homer Through the Looking Glass” by Julie Tomich at Fireweed Gallery. While coincidentally similar, the artists explore the concept in dramatically different ways.

Other shows include “Paint and Paddle,” a four-woman show at the Homer Council on the Arts inspired by a July kayak trip, Sara Hondel’s jewelry at the Art Shop Gallery, and a three-man show at Ptarmigan Arts of wood works by George Overpeck, Ted Heuer and Dan Fischer.

Michael Armstrong can be reached at michael.armstrong@homernews.com.