Join us for our upcoming MMAP Exhibition, featuring artist work as well as a information about Mid-Market and a preview of MMAP's publication. Open April 16-21st at the Diego Rivera Gallery. See below for more information--see you soon!

Be sure to check out NODE's Mid-Market Memory Shop this Sunday near 939 Market Street from 9:30am-3:00pm!

Learn more about their project on the MMAP website, NODE's website, and take their online survey here.

Today was the first of two performances by NODE (Network of Daily Experience), made up of artist team Kim Cook and Emily Dippo. It was a wonderful experience watching as passerby stopped to share their memories and hopes for the future of the Mid-Market neighborhood. 

What memories and stories would you like to share about Mid-Market? Stop by on this Sunday April 8th and share with us!

' Inside Hospitality House's Community Arts Programmed, currently housed within The Luggage Store Gallery

Today I sat down with Ivan Vera, the Community Arts Program Manager at Hospitality House, for an interview to be featured in the Mid-Market Art Project's upcoming publication. This local non-profit organization was founded in 1967, and began as a place for members of the Tenderloin community to come together with a common area to live and create. Today, Hospitality House is located on Leavenworth St, although the building is undergoing construction for wheel-chair accessibility. Subsequently, the Community Arts Program is now renting storefront space just below the Luggage Store Gallery on Market St, fused together in a working partnership of creation and exhibition.

I arrived soon after the day's opening at 10:30 A.M., where just a few constituents were preparing their supplies. Ivan greeted me at the front door, introduced his sole staff of two, and urged me to look around the space. Surrounding the artists' shelves and numerous tables, a retrospective show that wraps through the exterior display windows onto the interior walls reveals the changing trends and themes of artwork produced by community members through the last 43 years. 

Artwork from various years of Hospitality House's artists

For the interview, Ivan and I discussed the current trends in urban redevelopment or "revitalization", as he termed it, in the Mid-Market and surrounding Tenderloin and South of Market areas. He was most excited about the opportunity for engagement that the arts provided and the influx of traffic carried along by innovative tech resources in neighborhoods that he believes have seen too much vacancy. More on these subjects will be included in the publication's release.

Outside of the publication interview, he also delved into the recent history of the Hospitality House, which uses one of the earliest "harm-reduction" models of sponsorship in San Francisco. Under this model, community members with mental health issues or substance addictions can find a place to sleep, seek treatment, and also have the opportunity to create artwork in a safe and accessible environment that encourages them to learn from their peers. "Artwork is about sharing", Ivan says; and through the Community Arts Program, artists can not only share amongst themselves, but also with the larger neighborhood. They often receive sponsorships from local businesses and have the chance to show their work in curated exhibitions through other organizations like the Luggage Store. 

Ivan admitted that while the Tenderloin location of the Hospitality House art center is being refurbished, he does hope that they might continue to inhabit the Luggage Store's space. The Market Street location provides more exposure for the works created, passers-by linger for more time for viewing, local businesses are more aware of what the program does, and proceeds from artwork sales have more than tripled...all of which goes back to the artists who created them. With this desire to support their artists and their open door policy, they rely heavily on government funding which has often led to struggle as politics shift. Luckily, the increased awareness of how vital the arts are to community building has allowed them to open another similar location in South of Market in 2008. With the goal of supporting a healthier and more creative neighborhood, Ivan was optomistic about the future of the organization and the community as a whole: "we are here".

Ivan Vera, Community Arts Program Manager at Hospitality House

--Candace Cui

Ephemera from Artist Linda Trunzo's studio in San Francisco, CA.

This film, available as numerous youtube videos and on the Prelinger archives page, is dated just days before the great earthquake of 1906. Watching it is like excavating an urban geography, destroyed and all but forgotten.

 This captivating film unfolds in an unbroken shot. The static camera remains transfixed on the street ahead; the cable car on which it rests slowly drifts through downtown San Francisco’s main thoroughfare.

Today, audiovisual glimpses of daily life proliferate the web and media in thirty second sound bites. Depending on the projection speed this film unfolds between ten and fifteen minutes. Try to watch it in its entirety if you can combat the minute attention spans we hold.  The length alone is a reminder of rich history of Market Street.  The drawn out temporality reminds us that quick changes to the area are only possible through disastrous natural phenomena and effective changes take time and meditation.

-Rebecca