Alternative Exhibition Spaces (Artists Keep Inventing)

Alternative Exhibition Spaces (Artists Keep Inventing)

One of Richard Shelton's paintings, on large pieces of destructed buildings. At Temporary Space LA.

It’s no longer news that San Francisco is becoming more and more inhospitable to artists and other members of the working class. Many of us are leaving. The rest are scrambling, praying, and looking for new ideas. Dave & I started a public exhibition space in our living space. (Not a new idea, but not especially common either.) It’s just a stop-gap, until we find a more compatible community, which for us is probably going to be Los Angeles. 

Gallery visitor with iPad for enhanced viewing (point it at the art and it gives you more info on the piece, including preliminary drawings.) Work by Richard Shelton. At Temporary Space LA.

On a recent scouting mission to LA, we stumbled across an art opening at Temporary Space LA, which is (temporarily) at 5522 Wilshire Blvd. There was coffee, live music, and a big solo show of work by Richard Shelton. Temporary Space, like BigCrow, is about “creating an alternative art economy.” How refreshing! They were also started by artists, in this case Richard Shelton & Stacie Meyer. Unlike our invitational group shows, they are doing solo shows by mid-career artists and they have some cool tech-assisted art-viewing ideas that I’ve never seen before. They also encourage and facilitate direct collector to artist communication.

Gallery visitors at Temporary Space LA. Works on paper by Richard Shelton.

The best part of the experience for us (David W. Sumner, Pamela A. Heyda, John W. Wall, and yours truly) was the enthusiastic response from the gallerists when they found out we were artists from SF. We were welcomed, given freebies, invited to submit, and encouraged to move down to LA. 

Wow. OK. We’ll be back.