Ed Fuentes

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — December's is heavy on holiday shopping, with galleries and vendors looking to cheaper sales to find a profit from the season. The non-profit that manages the monthly event is still in search of a leader, and the economic downturn has taken a heavy toll on galleries.

Still, Art Walk rolls forward, and the new Gallery Row signs on Spring and Main get an official dedication in a 3pm ceremony at 4th and Spring. Just make sure to bundle up and consider packing an umbrella.

Update (2pm): Umbrella warning heeded. Nic Cha Kim of Gallery Row sends a Facebook message that the signage ceremony will now be held at 4th and Spring, just inside the Continental Building.

The Art Walk website still lists the October map as its most recent, so let us guide your trip around the neighborhood.

Starting at 5th and Main, has extended Clive Barker's new photographic series "Imagining Man" to December 24. A catalog signing will be held Saturday, December 12 from 2-4 pm. 102 W. 5th

Walk a block up Main and turn east on Winston, where already has a hit with "Printed II: An Exhibition of Hand Printed Art at Crewest" and continues to offer some of the most important urban art -- and affordable art -- on the West Coast. 110 Winston

Back to Main, then up to 4th. Cut west to Spring and north one block to find Lot 44 Coffee's Holiday Art Sale featuring artists from the Lola Mora Gallery during Art Walk from 6pm to 9pm. 257 S. Spring

Head down Spring to 5th and turn right to find the , whose website shows Melanie Van Latum's "portraits of hardboiled baroque, neo-noir coterie of haunting, flamboyant heroines" runs December 10- January 2, 2010. Artist Reception is Saturday December 12, 6-10pm. 209 W. 5th

One more block down Spring, then left on 6th. Across Main you'll find , which offers "feeling Feelings" to "investigate the immediacy of emotive response to cultural production. The exhibition creates a space in which to reconsider the manipulation of feeling on the scale of the personal and the social." 106 E. 6th

Circle back up Main to 5th and find , with Wally Gilbert's "Vanishing" mix of science and art, "a series of abstractions that are each an ever more mysterious and complex variation on this initial image." 18 works include a number of large scale prints to be on display for the LACDA exhibit. 107 W. 5th