Local Wonder by Ken Beasley, Charles Blackwell, Britteny, Rick Darnell, Jaine Dickens, Jeff Marshall, Txutxo Perez, Rex Resa, Jeff Roysdan, Niki Savage, Stix, Wilton Woods, Steven Zettler and more!

Local Wonder, an exhibition by Tenderloin artists, challenges the stereotypes and mischaracterizations about the Tenderloin. As the exhibition’s title implies, Local Wonder focuses on all the intensely positive and wonderful ideas that spring from the diversity of cultures, people and life-styles, which are the core of newly emerging Tenderloin.

Many of the artists exhibited in Local Wonder are from Hospitality House’s Community Arts Program, a program I was affiliated with for ten years. The Community Arts Program provide free materials, workspace, instruction and exhibition opportunities, for homeless, formerly homeless, poor and at risk artists and writers. In addition to the chronic poverty and homelessness, many of these artists have co-occurring disorders. This means that an artist may have one or more mental health issues, plus physical health problems such as diabetes, HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis C, and heart conditions. Additionally, it is not uncommon for this same group of artists to be on probation or parole, or have an undocumented immigration status. These are the more prominent issues these artists face on a daily basis. With all this in mind, it is an amazing testament to these artists capacity to live, create art, and form vibrant peer-artists communities.

Many of these artists are self-taught, and by virtue of their life experiences, would best be described as outsider artists. Some of the artists have more formal educations including BFAs and a few have gone on to graduate level studies.

The inclusion of local Tenderloin artists has not only addressed issues of geographic inclusion, but has tackled some really tougher issues. In my mind, these issues are about the worth of people (artists) who may different from you and me. Artists who may smell bad, who may talk and scream at phantoms on the streets, artists that eat out of trash cans or sleep in doorways of galleries you attend. The sheer ingenuity and uniqueness of the art that is displayed in Local Wonder, is just plain inspiring when you understand the social / political / personal circumstances out of which much of this has come.