‘Take This Hammer’ Explores Gentrification’s Attack on Artists

All over the nation, art galleries are disappearing, and they’re taking a part of America’s creative spirit with them as they go.

Luckily, there are people and places like writer/curator Christian Frock and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA). They’re creating solutions to problems facing art and culture, like using art itself to talk about them.

‘Take This Hammer’, which runs through mid-August at YBCA, is their most recent collaboration. The multimedia show was curated by Frock and plays with issues surrounding artist displacement and social justice.

“The spirit of protest is deeply engrained in this place; it’s a legacy that is among the Bay Area’s proudest contributions to this country’s evolving vision of freedom and equality,” says Frock.

Frock also runs Invisible Venue, a non-profit that organizes art installations in surprising spots like open public space or on the telephone.

Art is conversational and really dang resilient. And with people like Frock we see that while the world continues to throw curve balls, art keeps swinging for the fences.

We’re excited to see what new ideas Invisible Venue and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts have for art, community and #allofus.

Loving the photography by Mitche Manitou, 2014.

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