17 Month Pregnancy

Posted by admin in Art on 06 7th, 2006 | no responses

Portland | May 29th | Dan Hagan

May 25th, thru June 24th, 2006. Black Market Culture brings to the world it’s physical presence. Black Market Culture has developed into a vehicle that both showcases and promotes the work of an amazing collection of artists that spans 9 cities and 3 countries. For the past 17 months, they have existed mainly as an online entity but, the walls of the Goodfoot (Portland, OR) are filled with artwork by 20 artists.

Renegade met up with Michael Fields of Black Market Culture (BMC) to see how the first show went, how it came to be, and where its going?

R: How was the show?

BMC: It was a pretty good turn out. I don’t know exactly how many people, but it was pretty packed.

R: So you don’t deal so much with photography?

BMC: We’re completely open to photography. It’s just that we don’t get a lot of submissions from photographers, I don’t know why? It’s open to all mediums, except music, just for bandwidth reasons.

R: No video?

BMC: Yeah, no video or music. One three minute song would take up as much space as 20-30 artists.

R: Are you getting new artists all the time?

BMC: We try to make updates every two weeks for new artists.

R: Is it through word of mouth mostly?

BMC: Pretty much. We’ve got a myspace page setup ( http://www.myspace.com/blackmarketculture). Some postings on craigslist, but generally word of mouth.

R: Do you think it’s helped bring all these random artists together and help identify as a community?

BMC: I think all the artists have their own identities, as seen thru the work they produce. I think it introduces people to other people that might not otherwise meet.

R: I’ve never been to a show with other artists. It would interesting to have a whole room full of artists, talking and sharing.

BMC: Yeah, it made the opening really good. All the artists showing their work, plus all these other artists that came by.

R: Was Black Market Culture your idea, or where you kicking around the idea with couple of people?

BMC: Well, when I came to Portland in July of 2004 from Tucson (which is where I’m from) there was a lot going on. When I first got to Tucson from Pennsylvania, I noticed there was a lot of stuff going on, as compared to back home. I come from a small town, and I was like ‘wow, people paint on the walls here!’. When I got to Portland, ‘Whoa!’ It was like Tucson, but 1000 times more! There was so much culture going on, Bike collectives, Food Co-ops.

R: I know, after my first visit, I went back to Tucson, and felt like I had been in an abusive relationship for years and I had the chance to see what life in a healthy relationship was like. I left Tucson a few months later, and never looked back.

BMC: When I first got here, I started seeing things. I went to this really cool animation festival where the animators were there talking about their work. People sitting around talking, it just felt good. I really got into animation then. I started working on the computer then. It’s not the right speed for me. I’d sit down for 8 hours and come out with 20 seconds. That was so much work. But from that it got me used to the computer. My friend had a clothing company, and asked me if I could make him a website. So I gave it shot, and he was happy with it. Then I made a few more websites for a couple of artists. At that point I was like, ‘where is my website?’. But I didn’t have anything to put on it. Well there is a lot of art going as well as everything else, so I thought I could put art on the site. That’s where it started.

R: Pretty simple

BMC: Yeah.

R: So you go from putting a couple of artists on a website to this show with 20 artists from around the world at the Good Foot. What else is coming?

BMC: The next thing planned is a show at Local35 in November.

For more info go to blackmarketculture.com