Last weekend we found ourselves in San Francisco, trading in the ungodly heat of an LA summer for Carl (the fog) and 50 degrees. On Saturday night we were tipped off by friends about a must see art opening at the soon to close Flax Art Store – the likes of which was promoted through a few nondescript Instagram posts from The Curator’s Project and the Last Cat Gallery so we were unsure of what we were showing up for exactly. The large exhibition named SF Art Show (very creative) ended up bringing together a group of bay area artists to commemorate everyone who has pretty much ever supported Flax…ever. The list is long. So long I’m going to leave it for you at the end
We arrived at Flax around 6pm to a small crowd of SF “scenesters” smoking out front. We entered through the half empty store front where sad, heavily discounted notebooks and display cases were still for sale. After a brief moment of getting distracted by 110% off markers we made our way back to the actual show. The space opened up into a grand warehouse with nothing but paintings, murals, graffiti, site-specific installations, fun looking people and free PBR (score). Basically, our college art school wet dream.
The vibe was extremely laid back and approachable, so much so that it was fair to say there was enough weed, skateboards, and dogs present to go around twice. We struck up conversation with a couple who had stopped by to bid Flax farewell. The SF Giants hat wearing man reminisced about how he used to come to Flax as a teen in the 80s to buy Plexi for his car’s subwoofers. A different couple who had helped install some of the work talked to us about how the show came together on a whim, very last minute, and how cool it was to see artists rally in respect for such an iconic business. Not that SF is ever really bad at getting people to rally together for support or say a naked bike ride or two. Still, it was clear that this creative community really shows up when it matters.
Soon our conversations faded as skateboarding legend Tommy Guerrero took the stage with his band surrounded by Michael Jang’s larger than life portraits of a news anchor open call. We ended the night sipping our beers as we watched a woman who was seemingly tripping on acid to the sounds of Tommy’s band, give absolutely zero fucks. We commiserated with friends one last time about the tragedy in seeing this space turned into more six figure condos and joined them in taking pride in the best going away party an art store could hope for.
And now for your list of featured galleries, curators and artists in the SF Art Show:
Curators Project
Anthony Torrano
Becca Levine
Carmen McNall
Chad Hasegawa
Erlin Geffrard
Jan Wayne Swayze
MKUE
Michael Jang
PEZ
River St. James
The Growlery
Anna Landa
Bud Snow
Joe Brook
Marcos Ramirez
Michael Kershnar
Michael Koehle
Piper
Sofie Ramos
The Last Cat
Aaron Jupin
Albert Reyes
Bags43
Bigfoot
Derek James Marshall
Jenny Sharaf
Matthew Bajda
Mildred
Naoki Onodera
Pablo De Pinho
Pacolli
Ryan De La Hoz
Tim Diet
Yuka Ezoe
Zachary Sweet
Satellite of Love
Andy Vogt
Brian Perrin
Randy Colosky
Sarah Smith
Windy Chien
Flax art & design
Crystal Gonzalez
Joni Marie Theodorsen
Kayli Harig
Keith D Stanley
Stan Chan
Willie Sarate
