It is a central condition of the art world that the artists are not in charge. They're handled, spoken for, situated, and edited by dealers, curators, and administrators in a system that has worked out pretty well for a hundred years. But some artists want rooms of their own, too; not individual studios but collective showplaces where, by standing together, they can present themselves unfiltered before an audience. Today's artist-run spaces may not be powered by some squinty suspicion about commercialism or professionalismâeverybody wants to sellâbut anyplace today where a bunch of artists are piecing together the rent and bugging each other to get the press releases out still has a spiritual connection to the independent salons of early-modernist Europe.
That's why SOIL and Crawl Space and Shift and Punch matter. They're all local, artist-run spaces, and what they do says as much about Seattle as the Seattle Art Museum. SOIL is the gold standard. It is the largest, the oldest, and the most visible, and a place where plenty of artists got their careers started. "Without SOIL, I would have been fucked," Deb Baxter said simply. SOIL's 10th-anniversary celebration last year was a hyped and happy occasion that included the publication of a book and was followed by SOIL artists selling better than anyone expected in international company at Aqua Art Miami. SOIL's move to the Tashiro Kaplan building in Pioneer Square in 2004 put its 22 or 23 members (nobody is quite sure) in the thick of the commercial hub and the monthly art walk.
But at the same time, SOIL has been getting a serious run for its moneyânot in terms of clout or size but in terms of artistic prestigeâfrom a bitty little six-person collective in an out-of-the-way location: Crawl Space on Capitol Hill. In the past eight months, the shows and talks at Crawl Space have been stronger and more consistent than SOIL's. It's hard to imagine that people would flock to SOIL's shows if it, like Crawl Space, were hidden behind a fence miles from Pioneer Square. Anyone who's watching has to wonder what's behind Crawl Space's successes and SOIL's weaknesses.
It's not style. Crawl Space shows more video than SOIL and its membership is younger (four of the six have graduated from UW in the past few years), but nothing resembling a stylistic lockstep has emerged, from Diana Falchuk's antiformal public-art extravaganza to Brad Biancardi's slow, absorbing Non-Non-Referential Painting show, Chad Wentzel's rock-and-roll cut-paper riot, and Anne Mathern's conceptual video grouping. SOIL has range, too. Its only leaning is that it encourages artists to create work jointlyâan approach that can work better as part of an artist's unseen development than as a finished exhibition.
The obvious difference between Crawl Space and SOIL is size. Crawl Space has six members and has been very picky about selecting those: Mathern, Wentzel, Biancardi, Falchuk, Jason Wood, and Ori Ornstein (a new member whose work hasn't been shown yet). Mathern is managing director, but all that really means is that she does more work and pays more rent than anybody else. Contrary to popular opinion, Crawl Space is democratic. All the members get together for an intense two or three hours every two weeks and spend at least half the time arguing about what to show. Members get first pick. They can do solo or curated shows and they argue about their ideas. They get around six nonmember proposals every month and debate those, too. A majority has to agree for a show to get a slot. Recently, a single heated conversation about the relationship between an outside artist's concepts and materials lasted an hour and extended into an e-mail volley before the proponents finally outvoted the single detractor.
SOIL's meetings twice a month are necessarily more bureaucratic. Because its members wanted more dialogue, this year it instituted slide shows by a single member at each meeting. At that pace, it will take a year for every member's work to be discussed. Crawl Space does studio visits for half its members in a single night.
Plus, several SOIL members complained in interviews that they have dead weight in their ranks. Only a few members, unfortunately, seem willing to pick up the weed whacker.
SOIL has advantages over Crawl Space: history, relative financial stability, and charging more members fewer dollars to cover expenses (only $35 per month compared to Crawl Space's $60). It's also returning to Aqua Art Miami this year.
But those advantages have little bearing on the art. SOIL is supposed to be an experimental space unconcerned with selling work, but so is Crawl Space, with one important caveat: "You can experiment and do whatever the heck you want," Mathern said, "as long as you have a fantastic idea and you're awesome." And because there's no expectation about the lifespan of Crawl Space at this fledgling stage, "We don't know how long it's gonna last, so we have to make every show count," Wentzel said.
A little of both of those guidelines would go a long way at SOIL. 
