Back to My Roots
This week has brought an exciting new development in my life: I got accepted to the Studio Residency Program at Root Division, a nonprofit arts organization here in San Francisco’s Mission District. A few weeks ago, due to the urgings of friend and artist Deric Carner, I made the decision to apply to the program.
After speaking to the director on the phone about the application process, I quickly slapped together my portfolio, resume and finished updating my art portfolio website. That same afternoon I crossed my fingers and dropped off a folder containing evidence of my fine arts career to date. Anyway, to make a short story shorter, I interviewed and received notification 2 days ago that I got in. So I am officially going to have a studio space! I can barely contain myself, I’m so elated.
The program over at Root Division is great - you get a studio space at a much lower than market rent, and in exchange you just have to spend a few hours a month doing some sort of service for the organization. You can help with any number of things ranging from teaching community art classes to hanging exhibitions in their gallery space. In my case, they might also have me help out a bit with their website, since, as you know, this is my “thing.” I definitely consider the opportunity to be involved with the organization and spend some of my free time helping them out to be a perk rather than a burden.
As a studio resident, you also get the opportunity to show your work in their gallery, curate art exhibitions, and just be around the other studio artists in the program. Having gotten out of graduate school over 2 years ago, it’ll be great to interact with other working artists again on a day to day basis and be a part of the dialog.
So in addition to working full time on web design and development and running our company, I will be painting again and making other forms of art. It’s been a while since I’ve had a space to carry out my more involved art projects. I can’t wait to get started.
On February 29th, 2008, Andy said:
Yay Lauren! You are a stud.
On March 30th, 2008, Jeremy Anderson said:
Finding good studio space isn’t easy, especially in the city. We’ve looked at many spaces that just called for excessive sacrifices in one area or another, to be deemed useful. Root Division clearly stood out and I’m so happy for you for jumping in on it.
As down as others (myself included) will get on the art scene in San Francisco, the past year or so has fostered some very interesting work by artist such as yourself, Deric Carner, Justin Hoover and of course, Specimen.
Cheers!