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Q&A with Jayna Swartzman of Divisadero Community Gallery
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Jayna Swartzman is the mastermind behind the Divisadero Community Gallery--a unique space in the Lower Haight neighborhood that provides an accessible venue for emerging talent and facilitates community development.
Jayna Swartzman, founder of Divisadero Community Gallery,moved to San Francisco after receiving her BA in Art History from Santa Clara University. After a year of juggling multiple hats and working as an arts administrator, she spent a year traveling to broaden her understanding of contemporary art practice and of course, to have fun. Upon her return to San Francisco in 2008, the economy had begun its downward spiral and employment opportunities for art administrators were few and far between. Not to one to get discouraged, Swartzman got a job as a barista and has found it to be one of the more rewarding positions she's undertaken. Thanks to the encouragement from her co-workers friends and community, Swartzman presently interns at Southern Exposure, volunteers at 826, all while managing exhibitions for the Divisadero Community Gallery, a proto-exhibition space for what she hopes will become an expansive, city-wide Phantom Galleries program. The Divisadero Community Gallery has since been donated to District 5 as a temporary gallery space and has hosted three art exhibitions with many more in the works. 
- What is a phantom gallery?
Most major cities including San Jose, Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago have a Phantom Gallery Program. Phantom Galleries is a community based arts initiative in which artists and curators collaborate with property owners to rep-urpose vacant storefront into temporary art exhibition spaces. The program is mutually beneficial both to artists, property owners, and the community. It provides under-represented artists with a low barrier opportunity to exhibit their work to a larger audience. The community benefits from a beautification program which makes art more accessible to a diverse public. For property owners, Phantom Galleries is a unique way to promote their vacant space by making their vacant space visible and attractive to potential tenants and other small businesses and develop synergistic relationships with their surrounding community.
Being that Phantom Galleries is easily accessible for artists, it contributes to a more diverse and present arts scene where local artists can experiment and exchange ideas among San Francisco's larger creative community. This in turn leads to a stronger and more vibrant cultural environment, which would help develop San Francisco's reputation as a cultural destination.
2. Describe the process you went through to launch the Divisadero community gallery: when and how did you get started?
While a student at Santa Clara University, I worked with Cherri Lakey and Brian Eder, of Anno Domini Gallery and founders of Phantom Galleries on an exhibition showcasing the works of student artists from various schools and universities around San Jose and Santa Clara. The concept of making art, a notoriously exclusive enterprise, accessible to everyone encompassed all that I thought contemporary art practice should be about. I have always wanted to initiate a similar program in San Francisco but lacked the time and experience necessary to do so until now.
I had been shopping exhibition proposals around the city for a while but found that space was almost impossible to come by without forking over my rent or gambling my time on grant applications. When I explained this to Ellyn Parker, the Divisadero Merchants Coordinator during some down time at the coffee shop, she said she knew of an empty space down the street that was available and introduced me to the property owners, two of the most generous, enthusiastic and encouraging gentlemen I've ever had the pleasure to work with. Ellyn gave me a tour of the space-a former Money Mart- as well as other vacant store fronts along Divisadero, and asked me if I'd like to produce an exhibition there in collaboration with the Divisadero Art Walk, a quarterly neighborhood arts event. I said "This is just like a Phantom Gallery". She liked the name and the idea. From then on we began to discuss ways of expanding the program. The first way is to get the communities support. We have achieved that.
My first exhibition,Her, featured three west coast artists working in a variety of mediums on the topic of female identity. The show was a hit with the Art Walk crowd and the gallery became the centerpiece of the event. We received an overwhelming amount of positive feedback from the community and I was invited to remain in the space indefinitely. Soon artists were stopping by with post cards, asking to submit their portfolios, and wondering how they could get a space to exhibit. The answer: WE HAVE TO EXPAND THE PROGRAM.
3. What do you hope to accomplish through the phantom gallery project?
I hope to contribute to a larger, more diverse and publicly accessible cultural environment in San Francisco. I hope to provide more opportunities for hard-working creative-types to share their work with their community in an effort to promote a dialogue about culture and it's role and importance in our everyday lives. Our current landscape is saturated with visual representation, but often that imagery is funded and distributed by corporate interests that can often be exploitative and narrowly focused. Phantom galleries would help generate an alternative visual dialogue to a currently one sided consumer directed rhetoric.
4. How can people get involved with the gallery?
We're only in the development phase right now and have not yet established a formal system in which to collect submissions and contributions. In the meantime, those interested in finding out more about the program or submitting can contact me at J_Swartzman@yahoo.com and visit the Divisadero Art Walk blog at www.divisaderoartwalk.blogspot.com.
5. How do you select work for your exhibitions? What are your long-term curatorial values and goals?
This is a tricky question. For Phantom Galleries, I try to encourage all aspiring artists and curators to submit work. However, since the project is only in its development phase, space and scheduling are limited right now. The goal is to make space available to any artists or curators who demonstrate a commitment to the work (less Sunday Painters, more struggling artists who might not be able to afford art school or have the time or money or reputation to hunt for exhibition opportunities). So we're still working out the application process. The more space donations we're able to garner the broader our selection will be. As for the Community Gallery, I try to keep a variety of work and engage local artists and creative people and select work that suits the specifications of the space. I.E. Work that's easily visible through the windows, not too big, not too small, and materially diverse.
As for my own curatorial practice, I look for work that is aesthetically engaging and conceptually compelling. I work with all mediums but am increasingly interested in work that is technically innovative but most importantly subtle and poetic. I stay away from politics because I'm interested in art that encourages an empathic connection between the art object, the artist, and its audience. Work that is personal and allegorical, psychic and spiritual and layered with expression. I'm also into suspended narratives. For me an artwork must make itself available to a wide range a interpretation, work that is not locked up in academic tropes because I have faith in my audience and prefer to challenge the imagination. The individual's personal connection to an artwork, is to me, far more interesting and powerful than an institutional defense of it.
5. What do you have lined up for the gallery in the near future?
Currently on view at the Divisadero Community Gallery is a dual exhibition entitled "It Was and Remains..." featuring emerging artists Elizabeth Ribera and Megan Diddie. exhibition explores our relationship to relics of the past and what it means in term of our own organic fate... decay and preservation being the main themes. On June 4th, in collaboration with the Divisadero Art Walk, we will be hosting Pretty/Tough: The Life of a Teenage girl: a collection of photographic portraits that illuminate the complexity of the teenage experience. This project was conceived by Nikki Levine (photography instructor, Jewish Community High School of the Bay) in collaboration with her student, Jessica Katzki. The goal of this project is to explore and reveal the inner, emotional experience of being a teenage girl today and to translate those feelings into a visual medium. This is achieved by enabling each subject to feel comfortable within herself and by honoring exactly who she is right now.
Many thanks to Jayna Swartzman! Contact her at J_Swartzman@yahoo.com for more info on the gallery and how you can get involved.
Be sure to stop by at the Divisadero Community Gallery (537 Divisadero). Also check out the Divisadero Art Walk blog.
Upcoming show: The Life of a Teenage Girl: The Photography of Nikki Levine and Jessica Katzky. Reception: Thursday June 4th 2009; 6-9 PM. June 4-July 8.
*All photos courtesy of Jayna Swartzman.
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