San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Capturing the resilience of Bay Area artists.
New project asks 22 what they need to survive and thrive in 2021
How do we nurture reciprocity rather than transactional relationships in art? How do we sustain community through gentrification, a pandemic and revolution? What would it take to decolonize art? And what do creative and cultural communities need in order to stay rooted in the Bay Area?
These are the questions grounding Creatives in Place, a new listening project and digital platform that aims to capture the lived experiences, traditions and resilience of 22 Bay Area artists. Created through a collaboration between the Akonadi Foundation and Tao Rising, the site, which debuted in late January, explores what it means to thrive and survive through upheaval as an artist in the Bay Area.
The platform’s home page opens to a short video that gives viewers a taste of the energy found in the artist community of the Bay Area. Scroll down and curator Tammy Johnson welcomes viewers to the project. A portal tour guide is organized into four topics, with each artist responding to themes like “resistance and COVID” and “the Bay Area and its people.” In the “centerpieces” section, the artists offer work that shows how their art practice is impacted by living here. In the “art challenges and triumphs” section, they discuss the local art scene and their personal breakdowns and breakthroughs.
The 22 artists highlighted at creativesinplace.org represent a range of mediums, ethnicities, gender identities and geographies. There are poets, digital artists, vocalists, dancers, cultural workers and more. Viewers can explore by theme or through each artist’s featured page, which has their responses to the four topic areas in a mix of video, audio clips and photos.
“Years down the line, people are going to ask us what happened in that moment and what we were creating, so to document this is really critical,” said Johnson. “The driving factor was that we felt these 22 artists had something to say about what it’s like to make art in the Bay.”
There was no formal application, but rather artists were chosen after deep inquiry and outreach to the local arts community. “At one point, we had a list of about 100 people,” said Johnson, who nominated artists as part of the project’s core team along with Alex Haber, philanthropy adviser for Tao Rising, the charitable arm of Tao Capital venture capital firm; and Vanessa CamarenaArredondo, program officer of the Akonadi Foundation, which supports the development of
“Creatives in Place shows how arts and culture are part of a continuum of racial and social justice advocacy and healing. Art, activism and community wellness are inseparable.”
Vanessa CamarenaArredondo, program officer of the Akonadi Foundation
social change movements through grantmaking.
“Creatives in Place shows how arts and culture are part of a continuum of racial and social justice advocacy and healing,” said Camarena-Arredondo. “Art, activism and community wellness are inseparable.”
Each participating artist in Creatives in Place received an unrestricted $10,000 grant. “One of the things we made clear with the grant that went to artists is that they did not have to produce art for it,” said Johnson. Artists can use the funds to pay their rent, sustain their communities or even rest — “all of which are valid because that is a part of the process in making art,” Johnson said.
Conversations about the project began in 2019 between Johnson, Haber, CamarenaArredondo and others from Tao Rising. “All of us realized that the economic realities of the Bay Area have been pushing out not only artists but a lot of workingclass people for quite some time,” Johnson said. The project sought to address this barrier for artists specifically because they are the culture keepers. “We felt it was important that we go directly to the source, to understand the conditions that were being dealt with and to paint us a detailed picture of what was going on,” Johnson said.
Yosimar Reyes, one of the 22 artists, is an undocumented activist and poet. For Reyes, this project was an opportunity to capture joy, strength and the nuance of the every day in his East San Jose community. “Oftentimes, I don’t think we associate undocumented with powerful,” said Reyes. One of the most important things in his work is flipping the narrative on what it means to be undocumented. “We’re always a subject, but never the agents of our story,” he said.
For Creatives in Place, Reyes focused on “documenting the autonomy in which we exist outside of government aid and tapping into this beautiful network of community and survival.”
Before the pandemic, Reyes was working on the production of a oneman show at San Francisco’s
“Years down the line, people are going to ask us what happened in that moment and what we were creating, so to document this is really critical.”
Tammy Johnson, curator for Creatives in Place
famed Brava Theater. The pandemic put that on hold indefinitely, but it also gave him an opportunity to be more present with his family. Most of Reyes’ income supports his grandmother Mardonia Galeana, who lives in one of the three ZIP codes in East San Jose that have been disproportionately impacted by COVID19. “I have to be able to grapple with that — she’s isolated and we have to protect her by any means necessary,” said Reyes.
Most of his community is also undocumented, and Reyes realized that this was the time to step up further to help them access resources. Using his wide platform, he has been fundraising since the start of the pandemic. “How do you provide aid for the people who need it the most and are often left out?” said Reyes. “Trust your community.”
For artist and musician Dolores “Lolis” Garcia, the legacy she wants to leave through her work and Creatives in Place is letting the “new generation know that there is access in learning one’s culture and ways to keep it moving forward.”
Garcia teaches music and dance at the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts, and over the years, she has created a space to inspire youth to explore the diversity of Mexican music. Her musical training includes traditional instruments like the vihuela, guitarra quinta, pandero and quijada, as well as styles such as son huasteco, found in the northeastern part of Mexico; son jarocho, a regional folk style found along the Gulf of Mexico; music from the state of Guerrero; and mariachi music.
On the Creatives in Place website she states that her work “is an opportunity to bring traditions to communities who may not have an opportunity to go back home or who may have been away for too long.”
At the beginning, Garcia said the pandemic was constricting because her livelihood is all about sound and movement. “But the positive side of COVID is that I’ve been able to spend more time at home to focus on learning instruments such as the violin and guitarra de son in depth,” she said.
Creatives in Place gives viewers a chance to get to know the challenges, triumphs and work of Garcia, Reyes and 20 other artists deeply rooted in their communities in the Bay Area. In terms of the goal for the project, Johnson is matteroffact. “I don’t think I can give you an honest answer about what things are going to look like six months to a year from now.” Creatives in Place, she said, is “making this road as we walk it.”
Johnson is clear that the project does not have all the answers as to how to sustain and support Bay Area artists, but, she said, “I think we asked some of the right questions.”