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Eye Out For Art

Firehouse Art Collective and CollaborativeBerkeley, California

“Co-create community and culture among artists”.

In our travels, we always keep an eye out for art, art projects, most anything that involves visual arts. Knowing many artists who often struggle to get their work found, we try to promote the visual

arts any time we can. This past few weeks my family and I

have been looking at colleges and while in the San Francisco/Berkeley area, I happen to stumble upon a real gem.

We were walking along Shattuck Ave., known as Gourmet Ghetto in Berkeley (that’s for another article, suffice to say great food area), and saw a funky art gallery called Firehouse North Collective.

The Firehouse was associated with

other galleries in the community and also held an Artist’s Collective/Collaborative every Saturday in downtown Berkeley to “co-create community and culture”.

Intrigued about the concept, I placed a call to interview the director, Tom Franco, and we booked a date to interview. I was very surprised to learn (from my daughters) that Tom Franco was the son of Betsy Lou- a poet, author, and editor, Douglas Franco, who runs a non-profit agency and a shipping container company-his brother is the Oscar nominated actor James Franco.

We met at his Saturday Collaborative where he had me over a barrel (literally) and under an umbrella (thankfully).

LCCN: How did you get started?

TF: We are a family of artists. I really started doing it myself when I was 15, the family encouraged me, I felt really good about at my work so I pursued it. I started taking classes outside of school, that’s when my first sculpting teacher told me my work was good.

LCCN: What kind of mediums do you work with?

TF: I started with drawings then went on to clay finger modeling.

LCCN: How supportive were your parents?

TF: My parents were very supportive. They both majored at Stanford in art, that’s how they met. But, as many artists know, unless you are lucky, art won’t support you or your family so my mom went into writing and my dad (double major in business) went into business. After a successful career (still going) ironically my dad now teaches drawing class here in Berkeley.

LCCN: Who was the teacher that influenced you the most?

TF: My first sculpting teacher Bill

Iaculla who still lives in Palo Alto. I saw and very much admired what he was doing and said to myself “I could do that”. He was very supportive as a matter of fact we are about to do a collaborative together.

LCCN: Can you tell me a little about the Collaborative?

TF: Our goal is to bring artists together. We have our studio spaces, artists’ living spaces, and the galleries. At this point we are really trying to build our live events (every Saturday). We really need more live events to engage all the artists. We engage more artists; more people will come and see their work. The events are a combination of artists and vendor spaces, we rent the spaces out, and we have over 35 artists now.

LCCN: Bringing artists together, is that your community vision for the Collaborative?

TF: We want to create a space for artists to co-create community and culture. As artists ourselves we are in a dilemma. We were trained to be isolated (to paint or sculpt) and not really function with any potential-and I use the word nicely-in the community, that is the nature of art, so by coming together we are creating a community. This is something that we don’t have to force, it’s a natural thing for artists to get together and create art. When everybody comes together, everyone has a purpose, they are not isolated, their life has meaning, and they are not wondering what they are doing or going to do. Again, unless you are lucky, there is nowhere to go show your work; we are creating a place for that. Ironically, schools had facilities for art, but you were actually taught that you are not going anywhere with art, so you better stay in school and get a teaching credential or get another major.

LCCN: Are you painting and sculpting your own art?

TF: Yes I have to do my art. Some of the best moments come from when I do a collaborative show. All the artists and food vendors come in and we show off our work I need to be a part of that.

LCCN: How’s the future look for the collective?

TF: We are building staff to start putting more of these types of events on, get the word out about the collective. I am negotiating trade-outs with other Saturday events here in the city so we can promote each other at our events. This one-the Firehouse East Bazaar (3192 Adeline St, Berkeley) is going well and we are working on the Firehouse West Bazaar (in Gilman Village here in Berkeley. The response has been very good, are ready to grow.

LCCN: To co-create community and culture among local artists?

TF: Yes indeed.Tom’s work can be seen at http://tomfranco.blogspot.com/p/scuptures.html, find out more about the Collective at http://firehouseartcollective.blogspot.com/ and to find out more about his live Saturday bazaara go to http://firehouseartcollective.blogspot.com/p/fac-bazaar.html

Collective Director Tom Franco paints at the Co-Lab in 2011.