Your Guide to Saturday's Design District Gallery Day: Free Beer. Great Art. Nine Hours.

Misako Inaoka's amazing show at Galleri Urbane

See the best of the Design District for one, great day.

Galleried out? Spend Saturday raiding the Gypsy Wagon instead.

Even for veteran gallery hoppers, getting to every opening is limited by time available. We wind up picking and choosing between favorite spaces, artists with the biggest buzz, and which gallery doles out the heaviest pours. (What can I say? I'm cheap.)

The problem is also vexing for gallery owners. They'd like to see new faces pop through. They'd also like those visitors to build a relationship with the art by spending time with it, rather than sprinting off to see it all before everything shuts down. It's a conundrum that got Brian Gibb, owner of The Public Trust, thinking. He just saw two groups who needed each other. Then he played matchmaker.

The result was East Dallas Gallery Day, a lovely June Saturday where eight of East Dallas' most innovative spaces opened at noon and didn't close their doors until 9 p.m. More than a thousand folks showed up, lured further by free beer (it's sponsored by Brooklyn Brewery) and locally made swag (the first 25 in each gallery's door get a free t-shirt!). Now, it's the Design District's turn.

Twelve galleries have risen to the challenge, so this Saturday you have nine hours to visit: Conduit Gallery, Goss-Michael Foundation, Marty Walker Gallery, Cris Worley Fine Arts, Galleri Urbane, Dallas Contemporary, Circuit 12 Contemporary, Red Arrow Contemporary, Cohn Drennan Contemporary, Craighead Green Gallery, Holly Johnson Gallery, and Photographs Do Not Bend Gallery. I put them roughly in geographical order for you, although the final six are all on Dragon Street proper, so feel free to adjust to your mood. (Personally, I like to get the driving out of the way early.)

Here's what you can expect at each:

A piece in "Blinding Pain," by Gabriel Dawe at Conduit

Conduit Gallery: This is a long-stay space for Dallas, a gallery that's weathered every financial storm thrown at the art world, and it's managed to do so by offering a meticulously curated group of artists. Currently I'm most excited about the sculptural exhibition by Mexican-born artist Gabriel Dawe. His statement explains that his textile work -- which utilizes thousands of needles to create a fabric-rich look -- is a play on machismo and gender roles in Mexican culture. Namely, that a man shouldn't be sewing. Personally it touches me more on themes of safety, protection and boundaries. See what you take from it on Saturday. You'll also find punchy bright cut and painted collages by Rex Ray as well as intricate woodblock prints by Jill Storthz.

Goss-Michael Foundation: Saturday is your very last chance to catch this extraordinary show by British artist Adam McEwen. He's known for toying with pop concepts and minimalism by producing artwork with dastardly undertones. There is no limit to his media choices -- even window units are retold as sculpture.

Marty Walker Gallery: You'll see the combined efforts of Anna Membrino and Omar Rodriguez-Graham and how each plays with realism, sculpture within paintings and boundaries. You'll get a balance between Rodriguez-Graham's more formal angles and Membrino's morphing, rounded shapes.

Cris Worley Fine Arts: There's something up at Cris Worley right now that looks like that transparent phone from the '80, dissected and laid out, then set off with neon. It's going to make your brain explode.