Unveiling a Second Dimension

Not a single parking spot is open in the bustling downtown streets of San Jose in the afternoon, but turn onto South First, and it immediately seems less crowded. Here, it is calm and motionless. Follow this street for a few minutes, and you’ll approach a black wall with a grill gate door and Broadway-style marquee nine feet above. This is the Anno Domini Gallery — the hub of urban contemporary art, counterculture and subculture.

Past Anno Domini’s mini lobby lie 1,000 square feet of sheet-rocked walls and two independent art displays, accompanied by smooth jazz music, dusty air and a chalky-paint odor. The shows’ juxtaposing themes — light yet dark, warm yet cold, graceful yet strong — highlight diversity in thought and individuality.

“We do not care if it’s a girl or guy, we do not care if they went to school or not, we do not care how old they are, we do not care how many years they have been doing this, their gallery experience, we do not care where they are from,” said Cherri Lakey, co-creator of the Anno Domini Gallery. “It is about their work.”

An artistic subculture, a “secondary” culture to Silicon Valley’s main technology-centric culture, is on the rise. A few years ago, San Jose’s South First street had a 60 percent vacancy rate, meaning that more than half of the buildings were empty, according to Curator and Director of Programs of Zero1 gallery, Jaime Austin. But now, says Austin, the San Jose Downtown Association reports that there are 12 galleries in downtown San Jose alone as opposed to the four galleries 10 years ago.

This artistic movement aims to create more platforms for budding artists, according to Lakey, leading to the creation of several art galleries and museums in Silicon Valley such as Zero1 (on the same street as Anno Domini), the San Jose Museum of Art, Institute of Contemporary Art, Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana, and the Triton Museum of Art in Santa Clara. Such organizations promote the art scene through events where local Bay Area artists exhibit their work alongside regional and national artists.

Many of the galleries located in and around South First Street have collaborated to provide the city with several opportunities to engage in the arts, such as South First Fridays Art Walk, which feature both the Zero1 and Anno Domini Gallery.

“We had more than 10,000 people last year that came here to see our space specifically from the Art Walk event,” Austin said.

Local artists fight for art, ignoring its status as a subculture rather than fully developed culture, simply because they just love what they do. According to Karen Kienzle, director of the Palo Alto Art Center, artists have a unique internal drive to create work despite their environmental challenges.

These strong passions were what inspired co-creators of the Anno Domini Gallery, Cherri Lakey and her husband Brian Eder.

Fifteen years ago, both Lakey and her husband Eder were coming home from another typical workday at a San Francisco pre-press house, checking the page dynamics of published pieces. While commuting on their usual route, Lakey noticed a droopy, tired man loom over with his hands clasped together, almost as if praying. He was painted across an abandoned shack directly to her right; he hadn’t been there the day before.

“I would look at that every day thinking, ‘That is so amazing,’ ” she said. “I didn’t know why it hit me like that, but it did.”

Twenty-four hours later, the painting disappeared, completely masked by beige squares. “How is that better than what was there yesterday?” Lakey couldn’t help but ask.

She decided to find the artist of this painting that had changed her life — Barry McGee, also known as “Twist”. And that’s where her immersion into the world of street art began. Not only did Lakey discover Andrew Schoultz, Margaret Kilgallen and Sirron Norris — her sources of inspiration — but she unveiled the artistic dimension lurking in Silicon Valley.

And so they created the Anno Domini Gallery in 2000. Lakey and her husband did not know how, when, or where. They just knew they had to do it. They had to contribute to the unnoticed artistic world surrounding their daily lives.

“We were not going to have all the money we needed, all the time we need, or the most perfect pristine track lighting,” said Lakey. “But we said, ‘Let’s just start’.”

According to Anno Domini’s creator Lakey, this hidden art underworld stems from the same basic ingredients that kick started the technological revolution of Silicon Valley — openness in thought, intense creativity and utmost confidence. Nevertheless, it took its own time in finding its own niche.

“We used to go to a lot of city meetings in the late ‘90s and the early 2000s, and they would have these big vision plans for 2010 or 2020 or 2040, but art was never in those conversations. They would say, ‘Well, there are no artists that live here,’ ” Lakey said. “So we decided we needed to show them. Every time we turn around there needed to be art. There needs to be artists, there needs to be poets, there needs to be musicians. Now, no one says that anymore. The perception has changed. If anything, the national conversation has become arts and creativity makes cities successful.”

Efforts to expand art’s communal presence have been in the works. The Urban Institute, an organization designed to address social and economic needs, recently created the Arts and Culture Indicators Project to stress an expansive communal art presence.

However, to Lakey, the artistic subculture will always remain a subculture —  Silicon Valley’s second world. The art scene in Silicon Valley has yet to attain a widespread following because of economic hindrances.

Here is Lakey’s full interview.

According to Kienzle, Silicon Valley has driven out many local artists either trying to get enough money to pay rent or find a large enough space for them to be able to experiment with their craft because of the Valley’s high standard of living due to its technological renown. In fact, according to Forbes, the top five careers in Silicon Valley are all related to STEM.

Paul J. Gonzalez, a local mural artist in San Jose, has firsthand experience in this struggle. He found that the higher the expenses are, the more an individual is stripped of the opportunity of mastering their craft and getting more supplies.

“My biggest difficulty was learning about the ups and down with the economy and how it affects your business,” he said. “I was hit three times pretty hard by the wave of the economy. I had to rebuild my business twice from the ground up.”

Silicon Valley limits the growth of local starving artists due to relatively small amounts of exhibition opportunities in comparison to the larger museums located in San Francisco. As a result, fewer people buy the products of up-and-coming artists.

The art world still thrives despite these roadblocks, paving the route for growth of artists who would not make it in the larger art hubs like San Francisco, where nationally recognized artists are given primary importance.

“The pyramid of art is that only few are at the top and are internationally known artists and the next layer nationally known artists, and then the final layer of the state and regional artists,” said Harker Upper School Visual Arts Instructor Pilar Agüero-Esparza. “That last layer is the flavor here in Silicon Valley.”

Gallery • 6 Photos

Johnathan Dai

One of the many murals painted alongside the walls of Anno Domini gallery, one of the main activists in this growing movement.

Austin, curator of Zero1 gallery whose mission is to provide an intersection point of art and technology. According to Austin, Silicon Valley is more an idea than a place. She feels that the innovation Silicon Valley is known for was not depicted accurately. More than 200 artists in Silicon Valley have contributed to Zero1 and recently Zero1 was responsible for having an exhibit named Seeking Silicon Valley that featured 24 artists from 11 countries. Through these efforts, Austin hopes to transform the “idea” of Silicon Valley into a concrete reality.

“Where do you go to see this creativity and innovation that the region is known for because reality is that a lot of it is kind of behind closed doors on these corporate technology campuses or places where the general public cannot see,” Austin said. “The goal is to use the arts to bring those ideas of creativity and innovation out in the open and help create Silicon Valley become more of the place that we all imagine it to be.”

To Kienzle, a lot of new work involving technology is widely seen.

“I see artists embracing technology in their work,” Kienzle said. “You have a whole new broad range of media that are available to artists now and a whole range of tools that they can use to express themselves.”

Austin feels that technology and arts are already highly integrated with film and photography. “I think that key thing to remember for artists is that technology is a tool that the artists are using to create their art and as it is becoming more ubiquitous, that is exciting because that means that more people can participate in that,” she said. The National Endowment of Arts reported that 75 percent of Americans use technology in some way to engage in the arts, and California had the greatest number in this category.

Despite all the effort that many art enthusiasts have made, the art scene in Silicon Valley is not seen as the main scene.

“I don’t think here arts will ever be the dominant thing or the scene,” said John Russell, Executive Vice President of SV Creates, an organization that hopes to foster a strong visibility and engagement in the arts. “It will always be complementary to the technology piece.”

Ms. Agüero-Esparza also believes that Silicon Valley will never be known as an “art mecca,” due to its close proximity to its big stepsister, San Francisco.

“When you think of art, you think of the city,” she said. “We are a lot bigger city than San Francisco but what do we call it? We call it the city.”

San Francisco, home to more than thirty museums, steals the spotlight with its own artistic flair, as Austin mentioned. It has had an art culture right from its inception that ties back to rich history; it’s galleries have experienced the gold-fueled art boom in the late 1800s, withstood the 1906 earthquake, and outlasted both World Wars. In fact, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA) attracts 600,000 visitors annually. Furthermore, the deYoung Museum, the Palace of the Legion of Honor, and the Asian Art Museum all reside in San Francisco. Since most of these institutions have been built based off private collections, either with inaugural funding or subsequent financial donations, they offer resources not available in Silicon Valley. For instance, the SFMoMA grew from 1,100 artworks and a purchase fund donated by a private collector Albert M. Bender in the late 1930s. The museum, 85 years later, continues to support its endeavors with this money, and with more recent collections.

Another hurdle presents itself through the segregated development of the subculture within individual ethnic groups, all independent of one another.

“We all go to the work together but then we all go home to our own narrow cultural ghettos,” said Carolyn Schuk, President and Founder of Santa Clara Performing Arts Foundation.

Schuk says publicity of such museums or events are still sticking inside the realm of its group. For example, Korean arts events still only get advertised in Korean media, while Indian events still only get advertised in Indian media. Here in Silicon Valley, it’s up to the art fanatic to find their way around, which is particularly difficult if they are not used to being a minority.

“Things do not really get seen unless someone really goes out of their way to try and find them,” Schuk said.

Despite all these difficulties, the artistic scene continues to survive. “It’s not a rebellion for the sake of rebellion,” said Lakey. “It’s universal law — there always has to be those that think differently, rise up to get their ideas out there and attract other people of like-mindedness.”

The Silicon Valley habitat spans many different personalities, stories and interests. Right from the “geeks” to the “streets.” Silicon Valley has it all. Most of those in the scene agree that art is shadowed by the tech industry, but the movement continues to grow every single day.

This piece was originally published in the pages of Wingspan on January 28, 2015.