DOUBLE HEADER!

Small Works is proud to present two great shows at once! 

     David Wilson "First Painting" at gallery 107 at Minnesota Street Project

     Drew Bennett "Lightness" at Small Works Projects Gallery.

     Both Shows open January 10th at 5pm (Dave's closes at 7, Drew's at 9, followed by a dance party)

      Dave and Drew are part of a group of artists that I met shortly after moving to San Francisco. My earliest art activities here in the city were related to my good friend Todd Bura's involvement with Triple Bass Gallery on 24th street. Coming from the east coast and a working class background, and maybe also just being a Gen Xer, I was skeptical of the art world. In New York it was always about being the most aloof, the one who knew what was up to the exclusion of everyone else, hoarding prestige and opportunity because there wasn't that much to go around. To me, it was absurd and my radical "burn it all down" socialism associated it with privilege and bourgeois neuroticism.  I hated art. 

    Then I met these guys. I'll save that story for another time, but the welcome into this art world felt like a hug (what I had sarcastically called the 'San Francisco Handshake.') This art world included, offered, collaborated and shared. Dinner parties weren't competitions, they were get togethers of people who truly loved each other. There was a bit more naked river time than my east coast sensibility could handle, but the posturing here was always about who could be most open.  I found myself one night at the country house of the director of a major museum, overlooking the most California landscape I could imagine, not feeling like an outsider, not having -or needing- an angle and I cried a little- this is what an art world can be like. Maybe even I was an artist. Maybe. 

    Twenty years later these guys are still my dear friends. The things they have done for me (and I hope I have been able to do for them) will always fill my heart. I'm so glad to show them, and to show them together like this. One of the large pieces in Dave's show called “Tyler Lake Werk Trip (with Drew),” includes a little blue dot: Drew, probably naked, probably howling. Drew's show includes a painting (the second one when you walk in) of our friend Colter Jacobsen, Larry Rinder's husband, up in Ukiah. Larry's property in Ukiah, where I had my California Epiphany, where we all spent many times together, building, singing, walking, and falling in love with each other, shows up in David's drawings over and over. The sentiment of this place and time pervades both artist's work. I'm proud and honored to be a part of their artist's journeys, as I'm honored to have been so shaped by them and the many other artists who have given me so much.