Hotel del Sol transforms into artist haven during May Art Fair

During the first three days of May, the eclectic, dollhouse-like Hotel del Sol in the Marina district was turned into a one-of-a-kind art fair for Bay Area artists. Startup Art Fair was created by founders Ray Beldner and Steve Zavattero to provide unrepresented artists with the opportunity to showcase their work in a unique marketplace-style gallery.

“Most artists don’t ever get into a gallery,” explained Dale Eastman, one of the artists presenting, “so they work in isolation. You’re in your studio and you never get any feedback. (But here) somebody walks in, sees a piece and makes a comment, and it makes me think in a way that I would never have thought before. So it’s incredibly important,” she said.

The Fair attracted a variety of artists who worked in many different mediums, from painting, to needlepoint, to jigsaw puzzles. “I like these vintage jigsaw puzzles from the 1940s, 50s, 60s, until the mid 70s for their color quality and the choice of imagery that was utilized,” said David Jones, a participating artist. “The peculiar color quality of many of the lithographs, it’s different than naturalistic photography, and the puzzles are far more humanistic and natural than the puzzles that are produced today. The puzzles that are produced today are processed through an awful lot of Photoshop, and easy steps of replication, whereas these are not. It’s just my bias—I like them,” he said.

Each artist at the fair had their own room in which they could display a selection of their work. Jones explained, “One has to accept that a motel room is not a grand white cube with polished floors. You can’t make a (silk purse out of a sow’s ear). You have to accept certain parameters.” Still, he was able to transform the space into the mini-gallery that he thought best suited his work. “It took seven hours (to install). I have a friend that came in, and we decided that we didn’t want to rely on natural light completely, so we blocked off a front window. We moved chairs, things were taken down and we got rid of the extra furniture so there was room to move around,” said Jones.

Joshua Nissen King took a different approach to transforming his motel room, using the beds as surfaces on which to build a sculptural art landscape the night before the show. “I knew that I did not want the beds visible, because I wanted it to be more of a curated, immersive experience. So I came here on Thursday at seven, I saw the beds, and I left at three AM with it kind of like this. Then I was back the next morning to finish it up and wire up all the electrical, and I’ve been standing ever since,” King said.

“The majority of this was spontaneous,” he said, gesturing to the explosion of art covering the beds. “But most of my work, I don’t sketch it out before I make it. They’re just gestural, organic marks. I already have established my own vocabulary and language of visual items, so it was easy for me to just use the same kind of process that I use in paintings, but in 3D space.”

Each room is like its own little world, though the dreamy electronic music emanating from the DJ in the center courtyard of the motel unites them into a cohesive fair. Artists and patrons alike float in and out of rooms, circling the three floors of artwork. Overwhelmingly, the artists greatly appreciated the camaraderie element of Startup. “There’s such a wide diversity of work (here); it’s been really incredible to see,” said Rodney Ewing, one of the artists showcasing his work. “As well as being an artist, I’m a big fan of other people’s artwork. It’s been a lot of fun.”

Eastman was pleasantly surprised by the Art Fair. “That’s the unexpected part,” she said. “There are three of us here, and we’re kind of manning the gallery for four hours, so when there aren’t other visitors coming in, we’re talking about fear: the fear of being artists, the financial problems of being an artist, (asking ourselves questions, like) how do you work past that fear? Is it better to be in your own studio, or is it better to work in a collective? Having this mini professional practice was unexpected and fantastic,” Eastman said.

Jones also lauded the benefits of presenting in a format like Startup. “There are personality differences and people are from different places, but everyone seems to be having a good time,” he said. “Visual artists are a kind of animal that is maybe different than other performing artists—we’re all poor suffering souls—so we understand the problems that we share socially.”