“It was just kind of an imperative need to start doing things after the storm, because nothing was happening culturally, for obvious reasons,” Gisleson says.

The informal art shows and literary events that the group hosted in the months after the storm led to the formation of Press-Street later that year. In 2008, Gisleson and her partners opened Antenna, a gallery space on St. Claude Street in the city’s Upper Ninth Ward. Their intent with Antenna was to create a place that would support and inspire the local creative community by focusing on cutting-edge contemporary art.

“It’s a space where the commercial end is taken out of the equation,” Gisleson says. “It’s a space where people can do the sort of projects that they wouldn’t be able to do in a for-profit gallery, which tends to be a bit safer and market oriented.”

Press-Street is currently a 12-artist collective with a multidisciplinary approach, as each member specializes in a different medium. The non-profit collective also focuses heavily on New Orleans’ literary scene and actively promotes local writers’ endeavors. Press-Street is currently promoting the book Curtain Optional, a collaboration between father-son team Jim Richard (artist) and Brad Richard (writer). The book focuses on how Jim's writing career and a creative household impacted Brad’s early life.

This month, Antenna has been showcasing How To Build a Forest, an art-performance installation by collaborative duo PearlDamour and artist Shawn Hall. In this piece, a group constructs and deconstructs a makeshift forest over an eight-hour time frame. The project is influenced by Hurricane Katrina’s destruction of 100 trees on PearlDamour collaborator Lisa D’Amour’s family’s property. How To Build a Forest addresses how events like Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill have altered the Gulf’s ecosystems, while allowing viewers to become active participants in the installation and, thus, their environment. In May, Antenna will be showcasing My Mom Says My Work Has Really Improved, in which artists will pair one work from their childhood with a recent piece in order to show how their aesthetic has evolved over the years.

Antenna also hosts a number of events, including the annual 24-hour "Draw-a-Thon," in which artists and gallery visitors can stop by to sketch and socialize. Last year’s event brought in nearly 700 people, and Gisleson hopes that this year will pull in even more.

Over the past couple of years, Gisleson has noticed that New Orleans’ art scene has grown considerably, due in part to the influx of younger artists that will continue to make significant contributions to the city’s strong cultural legacy.

“A lot of young people have come in at a time when a lot of us that have been here since after the storm, working on these projects, are getting really burned out,” Gisleson says. “So we really have this influx of energy, ideas, and people who really want to keep things going.”

“Initially, a lot of people were interested [in starting a space], but then it just dwindled down to the few that were actually devoted to it,” Wallace says. “So we moved to Philadelphia with the intention of starting a space.”

Extra Extra is one of a handful of artist-run spaces in Philadelphia. Wallace, Frech, and Lacina wanted the space to provide a platform that would allow artists to create work that could challenge the traditional notions of what art, an artist, or a gallery could be.
 

Jon Rafman and Tabor Robak's "BNPJ.exe"

One of the ways that Extra Extra pushes artistic and geographical boundaries is by showcasing interactive Web-based projects by digital artists, which allows viewers to connect with the work from anywhere.

The guys recently launched their first downloadable project, BNJP.exe, which was created by Jon Rafman and Tabor Robak and takes viewers on a journey through a virtual labyrinth. “What this enables us to do is really show the work in the space that it was meant to be seen,” Wallace says. “This provides a Web interface for this project to take off.”

Throughout April, Extra Extra will be featuring Common Place, a transformative sculpture installation created by Beth Brandon, Samantha Margherita, and Luren Jenison. The collaboration between the three artists focuses on the ever-shifting definition of domestic life and the role that organic design plays in our increasingly tech-driven, secluded lives.

Philadelphia’s creative community has become pretty tight-knit, and commercial interests have not over-saturated the city’s gallery scene, which enables DIY venues and emerging artists to have complete creative license in developing unique ideas. There also have been a number of art spaces sprouting up throughout town, exemplifying how the city’s art scene has grown considerably over the past few years.

“Within a month of us opening up, we’ve had three other spaces open, which is kind of big for Philadelphia,” Frech says. “In Philly, there are just a handful of galleries, so three new spaces — it’s kind of a huge deal.”

“My landlord had a vacant store, which I thought I could experiment with and provide as a platform for some of the artists that I met at Goldsmiths,” Ilfeld says. “I initially had no idea how it would all develop, and it just grew organically.”
 

Tenderpixel is a tiny space (less than 65 square feet) that acts as a creative incubator for artists. Many of the artists that are invited to exhibit usually showcase work that is highly conceptualized.

Previous shows include an exhibit that was built around fictitious books that are mentioned within actual books and an exhibit that allowed patrons to dismantle artwork and purchase a section of it for a fraction of the original price.

“If it’s different and it stimulates the imagination, that’s a good start,” Ilfeld says. “The fun thing about Tenderpixel is that I never really know how a show will look until it actually happens.”

Ilfeld has also incorporated his interest in film into Tenderpixel’s programming. For the past four years, the gallery’s staff has been teaming up with the Rushes Soho Shorts Festival to host Tenderflix, a program that highlights the annual film festival’s experimental entries. Last year, Tenderpixel’s staff also introduced the Flicker Alley Film Festival that honors its neighborhood’s role as a hub for Britain’s burgeoning film industry in the early 20th Century.
 

Though the gallery focuses on allowing artists to pursue innovative projects, Ilfeld has also branched out into a commercial venture, Tenderproduct, which enables artists to create affordable pieces and sell their work. The shop and the gallery are located in neighboring spaces, and though Tenderpixel's physical space may be limited, it has made a sizable impact on Central London’s creative community and contemporary art scene.

“I hope that we can continue to grow in name and accolades," Ilfeld says, "and [that we] continue exhibiting a diverse range of artists.”

In 2009, Louky’s husband and fellow art curator Bart Keijsers Koning began focusing on LMAK full time. That same year, the couple decided to relocate its gallery and project space to Manhattan’s Lower East Side, an area that was receptive to its intent of engaging audiences with thought-provoking conceptual art.

“The nice thing that the Lower East Side is doing is drawing crowds that are very serious about art and what to engage, and [they] really look,” Bart says.

Louky, an independent art curator and art historian, has been known to take a DIY approach to showcasing art, including projects such as hosting guerrilla film screening from a truck. Her efforts with LMAK are guided by this same ideology of curating innovative contemporary art.

Both Louky and Bart have an interest in any medium of art that challenges the viewer in some way. They gravitate towards work that gives insight into the artist’s creative process and that captures a sense of progression in his or her methodologies and thought processes.

In March, LMAK will feature work by Elana Herzog, an artist who creates “sculptural drawings” from found textiles and staples. Her work blurs the lines between 2-D and 3-D spaces and high-brow and low-brow culture through the use of discarded fabrics.

LMAK also represents a number of international artists whose work is more conceptualized, so Louky and Bart have found inventive ways to forge connections between artists and potential collectors by building a solid online presence and marketing endeavors for their artists.

“We are constantly reviewing with the artist new goals and new ways to approach people,” Bart says. “It’s not just the show that you put up; that would be a quarter of the work.”

Aside from the exhibits, the Keijsers Konings curate LMAKseries, which showcases work by video and audio artists and allows the couple to continue delivering a broad perspective of innovative art.

“It keeps us aware and on the level of looking around, interested, fresh, and engaged,” Bart says. “It is personally what we do the gallery for; we are interested in art and the process of art, and we like to be a platform for that.”

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The building came into the hands of Ms. Gray’s grandson, George Sheer, in 2003. Along with the help of collaborator Stephanie Sherman, the former thrift store emerged as Elsewhere Collaborative — a living museum and experimental arts platform.
 

Elsewhere Collaborative: Dreams exhibit

What exactly is a “living museum”? Well, rather than functioning as a traditional gallery, Elsewhere operates as an ever-evolving archive of Gray’s belongings. Additionally, the collaborative is a multifunctional exhibition space, performance venue, and community center. In 2004, Elsewhere gained status as a not-for-profit organization, and it began hosting artist residencies on an ongoing basis. The space aims to “foster communications between creatives and participants” while functioning as a collaborative community. Additionally, through a variety of interactive programs, Elsewhere offers visitors “a way to consider objects outside a system of monetary value.”

Elsewhere is, in essence, an opportunity for exploration. The collaborative provides a venue for lectures, performances, and unique installation projects for a diverse audience within Greensboro — a community that is gradually experiencing cultural and economic revitalization. Elsewhere also offers museum tours and weekly events such as book and gardening clubs, plus regular cooking events at Elsewhere’s vegetarian food co-op.
 

Elsewhere Collaborative: Speyes exhibit

Recent art exhibitions include the Greensboro sound artist Invisible (Mark Dixon and Bart Trotman). During a week-long stay at Elsewhere, Invisible transformed a sewing treadle machine into a musical instrument called the "Singer Songwriter." At the culmination of their project, the artists performed a musical piece that incorporated their invention as well as an electric organ, a clock, and dripping ice blocks. During spring of 2011, Elsewhere will host a project entitled “Mildred Lane Goes Elsewhere.”  The project is a collaboration with J. Morgan Puett and will include refurbishing the kitchen at Elsewhere, while simultaneously producing a series of public events and dinners.
 

Elsewhere Collaborative: Speyes exhibit

Elsewhere continues to change and expand in response to organizational and financial growth. The collaborative is excited to offer project stipends in 2011 to its creative staff, and it will welcome a new group of live-in visiting artists, apprentices, and interns. As an active experiment in preservation, cultural history, and the arts, Elsewhere hopes to maintain its successful role as a dynamic, multifunctional space, while continuing to extend its efforts in education and community outreach.

The cooperative’s members were composed primarily of MICA (Mary Institute College of Art) students and alumni. Although Current began as an experiment with an uncertain life span, the space slowly gained notoriety within its community. In 2006, Current was voted best art gallery by the city’s newspaper.

Current’s strong following is largely due to the gallery’s unique mission. Rather than display works of art that will find immediate commercial success, the gallery prefers to display media – in a wide range of genres – that otherwise may not find a public outlet. Focusing primarily on local artists, Current values its reputation as “a bright outpost of the vigorous DIY ethic that characterizes the city’s quirky, self-sustaining art community.”
 

Current Gallery: Darb TV performance

The gallery’s next large-scale exhibit involves “mimicking” the format of a small grocery store. The installation will incorporate shopping baskets, a stationed cashier, and “products” that are created by artists and kept in constant stock. Current is working on finalizing details for the exhibit, and members are excited to present it in July of 2011 during Artscape – an annual arts and music festival in Baltimore.

In addition to curating visual-art exhibits, Current Gallery also uses its space to host live performances, film screenings, concerts, art workshops, and lectures. Rather than function as a physical space that merely displays art, Current has broad plans to exist as hands-on venue where artists may also create and develop their works. The gallery is in the midst of building artist studios, a screen-printing facility, and a photography darkroom.

In less than a year, CUAS has become a creative hub for Pilsen’s residents, offering gallery exhibits, affordable art workshops, an artist residency program, and other community-oriented events. Last July, CUAS kicked off its inaugural exhibition with Ray Noland’s Sweet Tea and American Values. For the show, Noland — who is known for his Go Tell Mama series of Obama campaign posters as well as his ubiquitous "Blago" stencil tags — found a way to merge both his politically inspired graphic art and street art by creating makeshift edifices and plastering them with campaign posters and stenciled images.

Though CUAS features street-centric art, co-owners Lauren Pacheco and Peter Kepha’s interests span beyond that. “A lot of times," Pacheco says, "people would box us and say, ‘You’re a graffiti gallery.’ We’re not a graffiti gallery. What is a graffiti gallery to begin with? We like to say that we promote urban contemporary art by individuals that are inspired by the urban landscape.”

Pacheco and Kepha, a pair of siblings, built a reputation within Chicago’s art community with their first gallery, 32^nd and Urban. The gallery, located in Bridgeport, has been a neighborhood hit since opening in 2007.  When the two asked Chicago muralist and long-time family friend Juan Chavez to open their first show, 400 people showed up. Despite the large crowds that gathered at 32^nd and Urban’s openings, things never got out of hand.

“We asked people to respect the space — have a beer, enjoy the music, buy some art, but when you leave, leave peacefully,” Pacheco says. “People really respected that, and the community really respected that.”

In 2008, 32^nd and Urban closed due to a mutual sense of burnout between Pacheco, Kepha, and their two other business partners. The four organized 17 shows in their first year — in addition to holding down full-time jobs — but Kepha felt that the strenuous schedule was worth it in the end. “I’m glad that we pushed ourselves that far early on because coming into this, even though the [CUAS] space is huge, I feel that it’s completely manageable,” he says.

While Pacheco and Kepha were scoping out spaces for their latest venture, they knew that they wanted to stay on Chicago's S0uth Side in order to continue building upon the area’s creative legacy and to dispel the stigmas that can be associated with that side of the city. “I didn’t want to go anywhere else; this is our home,” Kepha says. “A main reason that I wanted to stay here on the South Side is because I don’t think that people think that anything happens beyond Cermak. They think it’s a complete [cultural] wasteland.”

The two wanted to transform a 4,200-square-foot space in a former warehouse into a non-profit art center that could be beneficial to the rest of the community. In addition to promoting work by Chicago-based artists, Pacheco and Kepha also have incorporated affordable DIY workshops as an integral part of CUAS. Recently, Noland held a tutorial and taught a packed house of students how to create their own stencils.

“We had about 16 tables [in the gallery], and people were out here all cutting [their work] within the exhibition, which was pretty awesome,” Pacheco says. “It’s just the educational process of being able to interact within the gallery space with about $30,000 worth of artwork on the walls.”

For its upcoming exhibit, CUAS will be partnering with Johalla Projects to put on The Daley Show, which will put the spotlight on Mayor Richard M. Daley by creating non-campaign posters to commemorate the end of his 21 years in office. In addition, CUAS has partnered with the Chicago Loop Alliance’s Pop-Up Loop Project, which transforms vacant storefronts into temporary gallery spaces to put on Love Flows Both Ways in collaboration with the Maxwell Colette Gallery.  CUAS is expected to create additional pop-ups throughout the winter and also will partner with WBEZ to host its Winter Block Party in January.

With events and exhibits booked up through most of 2011, Pacheco and Kepha are as busy as ever but feel that it’s totally worth it. “We wanted the opportunity to diversify ourselves and do many different things,” Pacheco says. “I enjoy the non-profit world that we’re now in. I think that it’s beneficial, and a lot of people are excited about the projects that we’re doing.”

During the past 20 years, the area has attracted aspiring young people of various ethnicities due to its relatively low cost of living. More recently, the Mission District has grown into a progressive independent arts district. Although the area continues to boast its unyielding street art, it also has become home to an array of creative businesses and alternative art spaces. One of these businesses is Gallery Hijinks.
 

Ryan Riss: "Permenant Vacation"

Formed in August of 2010, Gallery Hijinks chose its location in the Mission District due to its “culture-rich neighborhood and the thriving arts community.” The gallery offers an intimate setting for visitors as well as a welcoming venue for progressive and contemporary artworks, displaying pieces from local and national artists who are often in the emerging stages of their careers.

Although Gallery Hijinks is a “traditional” gallery, the 21 artists that it represents, and the shows that it curates, are by no means within the confines of mainstream contemporary art. The artwork of Gallery Hijinks includes ethereal illustrations, psychedelia-inspired paintings, large-scale installations, and primordial sculpture pieces. The gallery is also home to painter Robert Minervini, who was recently accepted into New American Paintings’ juried exhibition-in-print.
 

Brynda Glazier: "Oasis 1"

Within just the past few months, Gallery Hijinks has presented the public with diverse, interdisciplinary shows such as Jerkin Off in Bunkbeds, which features a variety of engaging photographic works by artists Taylor Brubaker and Jason Levins, along with the release of a controversial publication of Levins’ photographs.

During the same time period, however, the gallery also provided a temporary home for the modular “Free Life Center” – a life-size house-installation project by Mark Warren Jacques and Seth Neefus. Gallery Hijinks is specifically interested in pieces and exhibitions such as these, which transform the physical gallery space and provide inspiration for its diverse visitors.
 

Taylor Brubaker, from Jerkin off in Bunkbeds

In this vein, the gallery is currently exhibiting a light-box installation by Mark Warren Jacques, and it's excited for its February show that will feature solo work by artist Sebastian Wahl. Gallery co-owner Jillian Mackintosh promises that the show will be “unlike any collage show before…[Wahl’s] work truly creates wonder and enhances mindfulness, concentration, tranquility, and insight.”
 

Yellena James & Pete Belkin: "Prefix"

As Skewville and Pufferella, Deville quietly strung sneaker-shaped wooden blocks along the telephone wires of New York and other international cities while Ha delved into her fascination of creating plush fabric images. But the cohesive street-art community that was quickly taking shape along the Lower East Side intrigued them. They introduced their new friends to Orchard Street Gallery, which the couple opened in late 2002. Deville and Ha began collaborating with other contemporary art galleries and featuring shows by Gore B, Meeka, and Jet + Rubble.

By 2007, the Lower East Side was in full gentrification mode, and the couple was soon displaced by its landlord. Despite taking their grievances through the court system, they decided that it was time to move on. “We didn’t even feel like staying in the neighborhood by that point; it was getting very commercial,” Ha says. “Orchard isn’t what it used to be, [but] I’m glad I could be there to see what it was.”

Deville and Ha relocated to Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood and felt that the area’s emerging creative scene would be conducive to their latest creative endeavor, Factory Fresh. In 2008, the pair spent six months transforming a bodega into their current gallery and studio space.

Factory Fresh is very much a continuation of the work that Deville and Ha were carrying out at Orchard Street, specifically by representing a cadre of international artists like British illustrator John Burgerman and German pop artist Jim Avignon. “It was cool because with street art, we got to travel and meet people, so a lot of the people that we show now are people that we met back then,” Ha says.  It’s also not uncommon for up-and-comers to be paired with more established artists for various shows.

Though Factory Fresh is often noted for showcasing street art, Deville’s and Ha’s interests and influences are rather expansive, and they have no qualms about exhibiting artists whose work pushes into other areas of contemporary art. “You can do a street project that is meant for the street, and it can work really well, or you can do a gallery show that’s really amazing too,” Ha says. “So I think that it’s really amazing to watch [artists’] careers evolve.”

After creating back-to-back shows during their first year, Deville and Ha have learned to incorporate the much-needed break into their schedules. As a result, Factory Fresh is currently on hiatus through November 20^th, allowing Deville to travel to Germany and Ha to focus on her own creative projects.

The pair’s hard work has definitely paid off, which is evident in Factory Fresh’s evolving community of new supporters. “Some of the people that we’d love to see haven’t made it out to us yet because they are total Manhattanites, and that’s fine,” Ha says. “But there are so many people out here that understand what we are doing. There’s definitely new people that we’ve met.”

Founded in 2007, Odessa welcomes all types of media submissions. In addition to more traditional 2D and 3D artwork, it especially encourages experimental, performance, video, and installation art. Along with the space’s rotating exhibits, Odessa also offers a wide range of live musical entertainment as well as movie screenings.

Odessa recognizes itself as a gallery whose mission is “to enhance the cultural experience of its community by providing forward-thinking emerging artists with an open environment for cross-disciplinary experiments.” Moreover, Odessa’s primary objective is not only to provide a progressive space for artists but an affordable one as well. Thus the gallery never charges more than $10 for submission fees, and it keeps admission prices to events even lower.

Art director Ashle Bailey, who curates most of Odessa’s exhibits, enthusiastically recalls an event from this September. “Recently, we had Release, which was a show that allowed everyone — not just artists — to anonymously submit items that they were holding onto for sentimental reasons," she says. "At the end of the show, the owners were allowed to burn them in the backyard of the gallery in a bonfire.” This cathartic, hands-on performance piece would not have been successful without the active involvement of community members, who were given the opportunity to act both as artist and audience.

Though Release was inspired by sentimental keepsakes, the gallery’s upcoming show will provide an example of the vast spectrum of art that Odessa promotes. Next month, the gallery will feature a show by nationally recognized graphic designer Joshua M. Smith, otherwise known as Hydro74. This Orlando-based designer expresses his visions through various media, such as typography and packaging design as well as less-traditional forms like T-shirts and snowboards.  He describes his work as “piety with progression” and has created bold and intricate graphics for such companies as Nike and Quicksilver.

Other future plans include making the gallery into a public art piece by allowing the creation of a vast mural on the gallery’s publicly visible exterior. Additionally, Odessa hopes to commission a local artist to design a sculpture garden for the gallery’s backyard. Bailey believes that this will make the gallery “a friendlier, community-oriented space.” This artist may also be commissioned to create custom bike racks for the gallery, and Bailey hopes that this will provide an initiative for the entire Broad Avenue Arts District to support bicycle advocacy in Memphis. Finally, Odessa plans to take care of some cosmetic updates on the building’s physical interior, with the hope that these updates will all “help to make the space as accommodating as possible for present and future artists.”