July 27, 2006

[Originally published in the 2005 Expo newspaper]

[Read other venue profiles in the Expo DIY Library.]

21 Grand came up in the thick of the Bay Area's dot-com spree. It was a period of excess, but also lots of cultural ferment. Tell us about it.

21 Grand began with six people brought together by J.D. Schreiber, who had a storefront gallery on Telegraph Avenue. We wanted to do something in Oakland at a time when San Francisco was still pretty much the only place to go, though a lot of artists and people in general were leaving San Francisco for Oakland because of the dot com effect. It was April of 2000. It was available and it was cheap--$700/month for approximately 900 sq. ft. of storefront and about 1500 sq. ft. upstairs as potential studio space.

Of course there was a lot of cleaning, construction and repairs to do. Drywall had been used as a floor for an incompetently installed bathroom, the heater got no heat, the gas pipe just hung there, there were bottles of urine, layers of wallpaper. Having your own arts space is to some degree glamorous and exciting; scraping wallpaper, filling in holes in damaged plaster and lath, and scraping mastic off the floor are not glamorous and exciting. I think that was the "beginning of the end" for several of our original six members. It wasn't worth it for them. They had other priorities.

Losing half our staff meant the remaining three of us had to staff more shows, but it actually made things much more functional--the doing vs. meeting ratio vastly improved. Our third member left in the fall of 2001 to go to college full time. It has been just Darren and Sarah since, though we get help from others. We're not as good at delegating as we should be, and we're still not getting paid.

There have been several moves since you first started. Was it all particularly arduous?

Within three months of opening, we lost our lease and were threatened with eviction. The honeymoon was brief. We were formally evicted in April 2001, less than a year after deciding to undertake 21 Grand. We were sued in every single courthouse in Oakland. It was extremely stressful.

But we held a twelve-hour benefit three weeks after being given notice, featuring a small-scale SRL performance in an adjacent parking lot and about 20 other performers and video artists, and managed to raise the $2,500 we needed to retain a lawyer to fight the eviction.

Five months of hurry-up-and-wait later and we had a one-year lease, which our landlord took every opportunity to find us in violation of. More courtrooms, more money.

We moved to a larger space on 23rd Street, two blocks away, before our lease was up, because we could see no end to the lawsuits. The build-out was much easier but still laborious--we had installed the stage two hours before its first use for our moving show, which started at the old space with a parade to the new 23rd Street space, where the show resumed. This was April 2002.

We filed for nonprofit status around that time, deciding we were in it for the long haul. We had signed a four year lease, and imagined we'd be there for quite a while. Other arts spaces started popping up in the neighborhood, and the neighborhood started being "hip." It was becoming a scene. We had some financial struggles, but there seemed to be steady progress.

Late 2003 we were notified that Signature Properties wanted to put condos on our block. We met with them, showed them our binders of archived ephemera, told them we wanted to stay. They said it was nothing personal, but it would be much easier to tear our building down than to build around it or on top of it. We were served notice in October 2004 that we had six months left. We had an advantageous clause in our lease that awarded us six months free rent if the building were sold before the lease was up. Such was the case. We had more fundraisers, and had to find another space that we'd inevitably have to build out.

We located our current space, on 25th Street, fairly quickly and signed a lease in late January 2005. There was a lot of construction that is still underway. We hope to remain here for a lot longer, acquire some stability. Though, to a certain degree, 21 Grand will always be a work in progress.

What's 21 Grand's specialty? How has 21 Grand evolved in terms of the work it presents, and its overall mission? What's changed, how have you retrenched, etc.?

21 Grand's specialty is interdisciplinary and experimental work in something of an avant garde tradition. We don't just focus on a particular genre. We are willing to take chances on new projects without a lot of lead time, unlike more established organizations that present similar work. I'm thinking of places like Southern Exposure, The Lab, New Langton Arts, where it's often over a year between them wanting to present your work and the actual show. In a way, we often serve as a sort of R&D facility for spaces like those.

We've ended up a major proponent of experimental improvised music, and the community of musicians find the venue valuable and are willing to support it. We've also been doing a lot more indie rock shows in the past year or so. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on there that in some ways mirrors what experimental musicians operating in more of the academic or classical tradition are doing and have done.

One thing I think is healthy and important about 21 Grand, is by having a broadly stated mission, a flexible floor plan, and an open invitation to outside curators, the space is structured in a way that doesn't preclude evolution of programming. We want to remain dynamic, relevant.

Any big changes, plans, events or activities coming up that folks should know about?

I think we might finally get around to have a Third Grand opening show or Fifth Anniversary party some time this fall. We're also presenting an outdoor video show in a parking lot near Jack London Square on August 20 that should be quite the event.

How do you go about fundraising, and what have your challenges and successes been?

[O]ur standard approach to fundraising has been--give them their money's worth. It involves getting a lot of people to throw down a little money, rather than courting large donors. It's a matter of identifying one's resources and using them. We don't know people with lots of money, but we know people with talent. We tend to do performance benefits and we have an annual art sale where the artwork is donated. We've also been fortunate in getting labor and materials donated. Most of the lumber and plywood for our new space was donated. The electrical work was done for free.

Getting grants as an Oakland arts organization is more difficult than if we were in San Francisco. There are several funders quite generous to the arts that only fund in SF, and Oakland is not the tourist mecca that SF is, thus no Hotel Tax Fund booty for us. We did recently get awarded a grant by the City of Oakland for our experimental music programming.

What about promoting your work? What's your primary outlet for this sort of thing?

As far as promotion goes, we do what everyone else does--send press releases to the weeklies, post to online lists when appropriate. We have an e-mail announcement list, and a print calendar that we try to distribute widely. Handing out flyers at other events is something we do as well. Word of mouth is also good. Maybe I'm a bit of a luddite, but I think the physical object--the flyer, the calendar, a person talking something up--is often more effective than e-mails, websites and other online efforts.

As a nonprofit, do you find cooperation rather than competition is a survival tactic?

Nonprofits compete for money, for artists, for audiences, for press attention. I like to practice what you could call cooperative competition--not stepping on other folks' toes, finding one's own niche, taking into account other space's programming when planning your own. We've hosted benefits for other organizations and other venues have hosted shows of ours. We display publicity for other spaces, so they'll be more likely to display ours.

What's the difference between a "professional" and a D.I.Y./underground artspace?

I think there's more of a spectrum than a simple distinction. On one end, you've got the warehouse space where the folks living there might not even be supposed to be living there, let alone have art and music shows that go on until three a.m.. On the other, you have a space like Southern Exposure that's got a budget of $300,000 per year, paid staff, a 30-year history, grant funds, regular hours, reviews in Artforum Magazine ... but Southern Exposure kinda began as that warehouse space, and there's still an appreciation for the D.I.Y. spirit.

That said, professional behavior is generally appreciated by artists, audiences, neighbors--and you can still have your D.I.Y. cred and honor financial arrangements, keep the toilet in working order, promote shows the best you can, make people comfortable and such.

Any tips for people who are interested in trying to start--or work at--an independent art space?

It's advice similar to all the cliches offered to aspiring writers, musicians, filmmakers--ask yourself, how much do you really want to do this? It's a real learning experience. Being a presenting organization (i.e. not having your own venue) is a good idea that a lot of folks don't try first or find as appealing as having their own walls, and floor, and plumbing and landlord. Having your own space is what "dear old Rummy" called "a long hard slog," and like that unfortunate war, I'd advise having an exit strategy.

What are your hopes for "art" in the San Francisco Bay Area? In terms of communities, commerce, cultural diversity, etc.

We've got plenty of community and cultural diversity. What I'd like to see is more press attention, thoughtful writing and criticism, and a hell of a lot more money. A city government with more of a clue would be helpful.

21 Grand (www.21grand.org/) is located at 416 25th Street, Oakland, CA 94612.