Show Me the Money is an earnest attempt to get people to talk about money in the visual arts.

Alternative Exposure is a grant program run by Southern Exposure and funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, with additional support by Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund. Alternative Exposure was launched in 2007 in order to support the independent, under-the-radar work of artists and small groups that are a defining feature of the San Francisco Bay Area art community. Since developing Alternative Exposure with SoEx, the Andy Warhol Foundation has invested in the creation of a growing national network of regional regranting programs, supporting the Idea Fund in Ho... More

In celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, Open Space commissioned a number of new posts from artists and writers. As part of the series, we asked Aimee Shapiro, Artists-in-Education program manager at Southern Exposure, to work with two artists from SoEx’s Artists-in-Education program. Both youth artists are members of... More

In celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, Open Space is hosting a suite of posts in tribute. As part of the series, we asked Aimee Shapiro, Artists-in-Education program manager at Southern Exposure (SoEx), to work with two artists from SoEx’s Artists-in-Education program. Both youth artists are members of SoEx’s ... More

I was chatting with friends near a makeshift bar at the opening night of the much-anticipated ArtMRKT fair, nibbling on a muffuletta finger sandwich, washing it down with complimentary tequila, when someone inadvertently knocked a fanciful floral welded metal sculpture from its pedestal. The surprisingly heavy artwork hit my lower leg before meetin... More

The steady, Saturday night precipitation on March 19 did little to deter droves of SF art lovers — myself included — from hitting the coordinated gallery openings in an increasingly vital zone east of Harrison Street. Dubbed Lunar Mission in honor of the moon’s uncharacteristically close proximity to the earth that evening, perhaps the audie... More

Because this is my last post for 2010 I wanted to reflect on a few photographs I took when I was living in San Francisco. Having been away from the Bay Area for almost two years now, there are certain moments I recall vividly, in full color and in 3-D, if you know what I mean. One such moment was when I was taking pictures at Southern Exposure in 2... More

You may have missed the Art Publishing Now summit and fair at Southern Exposure this month, but you can still get an overview of publishing activity in the SF Bay Area. These one- to two-minute videos offer capsule introductions to a handful (15) of the people behind the print (or web) in the SF Bay Area. Two longer conversations recorded before the event, with Stretcher and Art Practical, are included at the end. For more information on the weekend, or to visit the archives, click over to the APN website.

Julian Myers’ post on the recent turmoil at New Langton Arts gave rise to a robust and very necessary discussion about the state of contemporary art in the Bay Area. Looking beyond the immediate issues at Langton, I’d like to address the perceived conflict between the local and international art worlds. In the Bay Area, we have many world-class museums, universities and art colleges. We have the benefit of some of the world’s foremost artists, curators and critics, having chosen to work here. We have a wonderfully tight-knit and innovative arts community, full of experimentation and creative risk-taking. The smallness of our region allows for incubation of new ideas in an interdisciplinary context. Our location at the nexus of the East and the West gives us an unusually international perspective for such a small community. In theory, this should be the ideal place to be an arts worker. Yet there is an underlying tension here, too often expressed in buzzwords like R... More

We have an innate desire to preserve things: spaces, objects, memories. Preservation implies a sanctification, a remove from touch, and guard against eventual decay. Public spaces are redeveloped, graffiti is removed, and a new coat of paint added. Art objects, once delicately handmade, are often removed from touch by display cases and the demarcated spaces of museums.

Local artist Julia Goodman is interested in interrupting this process through a focus on ephemerality, ritual, and meditations on time. Goodman’s art practice consists of collecting junk mail once a week from her neighbors in Bernal Heights and transforming the junk mail into cast handmade paper sculptures. Her practice is multi-dimensional: community oriented as she travels door to door collecting paper and studio based as she engages in the laborious process of carving wood, making and casting paper. Goodman’s piece “Eleven Month Mourning Project: August 19, 2007 – July 14, 2008″ is repres... More