San Francisco isn't much of an art buying town. Art creating? Yes. Art appreciating? Certainly. Art buying? Not so much. If an artist wants to make a career of it, the sad fact is that they have to leave the Bay Area, and head to one of the big art cities: New York, LA, Chicago, or Miami. San Francisco runs a distant (and depressing) 5th.As unfortunate as that may be, it shouldn't be too surprising, really ... more than anything, San Francisco has a storied tradition of bleeding edge creativity, rugged entrepreneurship, and flying in the face of the norm ... oftentimes swinging wildly at it. Our strength is thus in underground and emerging artists who aren't aiming at the mainstream unless they're doing so through a set of crosshairs.
When that's combined with the laid-back attitude and studied casualness for which the Bay Area is known, it can be understood why audacious spending on a scale commensurate with serious art collection just doesn't happen here. San Franciscans value one another more for what they create than the price tag of the art they hang on their walls.What the Bay Area needs is an innovative structure for its art market that takes this reality into account, and works with it -- augmenting its strengths and offsetting its weaknesses -- to enable Bay Area artists to make a semblance of a living creating exactly the art they want to create, without having to compromise their vision. Otherwise, artists whose work deserves to be seen, and whose voices need to be heard, will forever while away their days as your neighborhood barista.
I'd like to see this new market become a reality, and to that end, I've been curating art exhibitions for a variety of events featuring an eclectic mix of emerging artists, styles and media. The most recent was part of False Profit's Alchemy, an interactive art event at San Francisco's CELLspace. It hosted over 600 attendees, all of whom seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves as they took part in the various interactive aspects of the evening. The gallery featured a variety of oil paintings, pen and ink drawings, photography, collage, print-making, sculpture (works in steel, vinyl and cement), video, and an interactive site-specific installation. The represented artists ranged in age from 21 to 50+.
It was great working with the smart, driven folks at False Profit, and to have the opportunity to exhibit a strong showing of emerging artists to an appreciative crowd. Now ... to just get that crowd to put their money where their appreciation is ....
