Shortlist: Organization

Crawl Space

You know what’s even harder than founding a new artist collective?
Keeping that artist collective going well after the first blush of
publicity.

Crawl Space began in 2003 with six artists. Just recently, the
collective hired its first managing director, Jennifer Campbell, who
will help to free the exhausted member-artists. Amazingly, the changing
roster has been able to maintain this inconveniently L-shaped and
out-of-the-way Capitol Hill gallery as a place where, if you miss the
show, you’ll regret it every time.

That’s not to say that all the shows at Crawl Space are hits, but
plenty are, and they exist on their wits alone. Take, for instance,
Coming of Age, a national video survey curated by Seattle Art
Museum’s Marisa Sanchez this winter, or the recent The
Shining–obsessed video and sculpture installation by Eugene
artist Mike Bray. Crawl Space has no right to be so good. Just the
will. JEN GRAVES

Art Klatch

It has been more than a year since contemporary art dealer Scott
Lawrimore began paying for other people’s coffees and brioches every
Tuesday morning.

It began at the IHOP on Capitol Hill, but the booths were too small
and the atmosphere too ironic, so Lawrimore moved his moderated
conversation about art and culture to the nearby Cafe Presse, where
anybody is welcome to show up and talk, or just listen.

Thankfully, Lawrimore is always prepared with a ready supply of
ideas and recent experiences to throw out there, and he runs the
proceedings but by no means governs them. Everyone who wants a say has
it, and whenever visiting artists are in town—Dario Robleto (for
his show at the Frye), Oliver Herring (before TASK at the
Central Library)—they show up bright and early, ready to be
assailed with questions and comments, fawning and cynicism. It really
is an open forum that also happens to be free and live and in person.
You’d have to try in order to leave Klatch without a new thought
in your head. JEN GRAVES

Free Sheep Foundation

Before the Bridge Motel in Fremont went down in September 2007, a
bunch of artists organized a flaming, one-night-only public wake. They
did the same thing for the Belmont Building on Capitol Hill in
November. This summer, they formally incorporated and made it their
mission to dress up corpses all over town.

For the next few months at least—their lease could be extended
if the economy continues to stall the building’s developer, Martin
Selig—they’re in a single-story bit of 1940s modernism in
Belltown that Selig plans to demolish. But for now, it’s an art gallery
and a handful of artist studios. When the Free Sheep artists leave
here, they plan to move to the next disused building waiting for
demolition.

What’s great about Free Sheep isn’t the potential for art of lasting
quality. The quality of the art is secondary. The point is that the
artists behind Free Sheep deliver ephemeral monuments to the ephemeral
monument we all live in—the city. JEN GRAVES

frizzelle@thestranger.com