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December 20, 2009
Arts
When Businesses Move Out, Art Moves In
By CHLOE VELTMAN
No one likes empty storefronts; they make streets look like gap-toothed smiles. Now that San Francisco’s business districts are feeling the economic pinch, city officials, like dentists, have been scouting for ways to fix the cavities. Whether business picks up next year remains to be seen, but in the meantime, civic leaders and neighborhood associations have turned to artists for a temporary solution.
The Art in Storefronts initiative, introduced in the fall in San Francisco, is probably the most comprehensive project of its kind in the city. The program, which has received applications from nearly 200 local artists to date, has filled 20 empty commercial storefronts in four areas — the Tenderloin, Bayview, Central Market and the Mission — with temporary art installations. Plans are afoot to expand the project to additional neighborhoods like Chinatown.
According to Kate Patterson, public-art project manager for the San Francisco Arts Commission, the proposals are chosen for aesthetic appeal, innovation, neighborhood context and diversity of subject matter, content and media. Each selected artist receives a $500 stipend.
A city’s artists are often the first to be shut out in hard times, and these recent projects are certainly thought-provoking. On the one hand, the artwork in windows formerly occupied by electronic gadgetry and mannequins dressed in designer denim seem to make time stand still: They encourage passers-by to take a break from the holiday shopping frenzy to linger over something unusual and, in some cases, beautiful.
On the other hand, the transience of these projects — and the “placeholder” mentality behind them — points to the perpetually fraught relationship between commerce and art.
Alexis Amann and Jonathan Burstein’s “Don’t Give Up the Ship,” at 986 Market Street, is a wonderful example of storefront art. This duo’s luminous, marine-hued installation depicting an underwater landscape — complete with sharks, seaweed and a newspaper-reading deep-sea diver — playfully stands out against the strip clubs, boarded-up facades and 24-hour doughnut shops of Central Market.
The cardboard-cutout montage has a children’s comic-book feel. But on closer inspection, the piece has a satirical, dystopian edge more akin to the work of Art Spiegelman or the local graphic novelist Jon Adams than to Richard Scarry. The diver’s newspaper carries the headline “Homeowners Underwater! Tsunami of Foreclosures”; miniature human heads bob forlornly atop seaweed strands; and a menacing shark has the word “loans” painted on its side.
Although delivered with humor, the message is clear: the Central Market neighborhood is underwater, and locals must fight to stay afloat.
Chris Treggiari and Billy Mitchell’s installation at 144 Taylor Street in the Tenderloin has a similarly powerful neighborhood connection and strong visual appeal. Unlike the other projects around town, their work, “Fight for Your Neighborhood,” stands in front of a derelict restaurant — a shuttered facade that once belonged to the San Francisco institution Original Joe’s — rather than behind the safety of glass.
This colorful, street-level artwork, with its painted prizefighter and wooden boxing ring surrounded by posters of local residents with their fists raised, pays homage to the neighborhood’s boxing history. It also physically mimics the challenges facing the area as it fights for survival in a depressed economy.
Mr. Treggiari said his artwork had been vandalized a few times. (When I recently visited, a piece of wood had been torn off and thrown into the boxing ring.) But residents have reportedly rallied around the installation.
“The neighborhood has truly taken ownership over the project,” Mr. Treggiari said. “I’ve recently received reports from friends who have seen paintings left by my piece. I hope it continues to inspire creativity within the community, because this is really what it’s all about.”
Just as this artwork mutates over time, the other San Francisco installations (as well as similar storefront projects in cities as diverse as New York, London and Cape Girardeau, Mo.) face change — and ultimately eviction.
According to Daniel Hurtado, executive director of the Central Market Community Benefit District, planned retail projects in the area will soon force out two artworks. And in the Tenderloin, Elvin Padilla, executive director of the Tenderloin Economic Development Project, expects the Original Joe’s site to be developed in 2010.
The Art in Storefronts project is undeniably laudable from a social and cultural standpoint. Both residents and artists are benefiting. Christopher Simmons, one of the creators of the work “Everything Is O.K.,” at 998 Market Street, said that he had had an increase in visitors to his Facebook page since the unveiling of his installation, and that he was in talks with galleries about future commissions.
It’s great that San Francisco is taking an art-forward stance during the recession. Care, however, should be taken to preserve these artworks and prevent commerce from dictating all the rules. Let’s hope that the city continues to support local artists when its “storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light” — as Allen Ginsberg irreverently depicts the urban metropolis in “Howl” — once again ring with the sound of jangling cash registers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/ar...re.html?ref=us
The Art in Storefronts initiative, introduced in the fall in San Francisco, is probably the most comprehensive project of its kind in the city. The program, which has received applications from nearly 200 local artists to date, has filled 20 empty commercial storefronts in four areas — the Tenderloin, Bayview, Central Market and the Mission — with temporary art installations. Plans are afoot to expand the project to additional neighborhoods like Chinatown.
According to Kate Patterson, public-art project manager for the San Francisco Arts Commission, the proposals are chosen for aesthetic appeal, innovation, neighborhood context and diversity of subject matter, content and media. Each selected artist receives a $500 stipend.
A city’s artists are often the first to be shut out in hard times, and these recent projects are certainly thought-provoking. On the one hand, the artwork in windows formerly occupied by electronic gadgetry and mannequins dressed in designer denim seem to make time stand still: They encourage passers-by to take a break from the holiday shopping frenzy to linger over something unusual and, in some cases, beautiful.
On the other hand, the transience of these projects — and the “placeholder” mentality behind them — points to the perpetually fraught relationship between commerce and art.
Alexis Amann and Jonathan Burstein’s “Don’t Give Up the Ship,” at 986 Market Street, is a wonderful example of storefront art. This duo’s luminous, marine-hued installation depicting an underwater landscape — complete with sharks, seaweed and a newspaper-reading deep-sea diver — playfully stands out against the strip clubs, boarded-up facades and 24-hour doughnut shops of Central Market.
The cardboard-cutout montage has a children’s comic-book feel. But on closer inspection, the piece has a satirical, dystopian edge more akin to the work of Art Spiegelman or the local graphic novelist Jon Adams than to Richard Scarry. The diver’s newspaper carries the headline “Homeowners Underwater! Tsunami of Foreclosures”; miniature human heads bob forlornly atop seaweed strands; and a menacing shark has the word “loans” painted on its side.
Although delivered with humor, the message is clear: the Central Market neighborhood is underwater, and locals must fight to stay afloat.
Chris Treggiari and Billy Mitchell’s installation at 144 Taylor Street in the Tenderloin has a similarly powerful neighborhood connection and strong visual appeal. Unlike the other projects around town, their work, “Fight for Your Neighborhood,” stands in front of a derelict restaurant — a shuttered facade that once belonged to the San Francisco institution Original Joe’s — rather than behind the safety of glass.
This colorful, street-level artwork, with its painted prizefighter and wooden boxing ring surrounded by posters of local residents with their fists raised, pays homage to the neighborhood’s boxing history. It also physically mimics the challenges facing the area as it fights for survival in a depressed economy.
Mr. Treggiari said his artwork had been vandalized a few times. (When I recently visited, a piece of wood had been torn off and thrown into the boxing ring.) But residents have reportedly rallied around the installation.
“The neighborhood has truly taken ownership over the project,” Mr. Treggiari said. “I’ve recently received reports from friends who have seen paintings left by my piece. I hope it continues to inspire creativity within the community, because this is really what it’s all about.”
Just as this artwork mutates over time, the other San Francisco installations (as well as similar storefront projects in cities as diverse as New York, London and Cape Girardeau, Mo.) face change — and ultimately eviction.
According to Daniel Hurtado, executive director of the Central Market Community Benefit District, planned retail projects in the area will soon force out two artworks. And in the Tenderloin, Elvin Padilla, executive director of the Tenderloin Economic Development Project, expects the Original Joe’s site to be developed in 2010.
The Art in Storefronts project is undeniably laudable from a social and cultural standpoint. Both residents and artists are benefiting. Christopher Simmons, one of the creators of the work “Everything Is O.K.,” at 998 Market Street, said that he had had an increase in visitors to his Facebook page since the unveiling of his installation, and that he was in talks with galleries about future commissions.
It’s great that San Francisco is taking an art-forward stance during the recession. Care, however, should be taken to preserve these artworks and prevent commerce from dictating all the rules. Let’s hope that the city continues to support local artists when its “storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light” — as Allen Ginsberg irreverently depicts the urban metropolis in “Howl” — once again ring with the sound of jangling cash registers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/ar...re.html?ref=us