When Griff Williams started Gallery 16 in 1993 in San Francisco, a city known for having the most non-profit art organizations per capita, he knew that he had to create a space that would stand out.
“I really wanted to connect myself with the arts community in San Francisco, which has always been really vibrant,” Williams says. “We came upon the idea of kind of creating a new sort of model for art support — one that really didn’t require me to become a non-profit art space, which I thought was a model that was kind of on the way out.”
So the painter, trained at the San Francisco Art Institute, decided to set himself apart by merging his gallery with a one-of-a-kind fine-art press. The press portion of Williams’ venture publishes limited-edition books, artists’ portfolios, and a biannual book series called One Artist One Concept.
The book series features “predominantly West Coast conceptual artists to produce a body of work that is specific to the book,” Williams says about the series.
The printing aspect of Gallery 16 also provides a revenue source that supports the space’s exhibition program. When it comes to selecting work to highlight on the gallery end, Williams likes to give artists carte blanche from a curatorial standpoint.
“The freedom that we have allowed artists to have here in the exhibition program I think is unique, not just in San Francisco but in lots of places,” he says. “We kind of designed it so that it wasn’t an object-driven exhibition program. There has been a really artist-focused, incubating quality to it over the years, and that’s something that’s rare everywhere.”
Currently, Sonny Smith: 100 Records is on view at Gallery 16 through the end of May. Musician Sonny Smith came up with the concept of creating 100 fictitious bands and asked 100 artists from throughout the country, like Tucker Nichols, Chris Johansen, and Alice Shaw among others, to design album covers for their latest releases.
“Then Sonny went into the studio and created 100 songs to go with each one of these objects that these artists have created,” Williams says.
Music has always played an integral role in Gallery 16’s shows and openings, and the space has always been supportive of San Francisco’s eclectic music scene. “The area has a real rich tradition of music as well as visual art, so we try to combine those things together,” Williams says.
The intersection between art and local music seems to be a huge draw for many of Gallery 16’s patrons. At Sonny Smith’s opening on April 9, his band Sonny and the Sunsets and SF-based band The Sandwiches each played a set, and according to Williams, “it was a total mob scene; the cops came, and it had really become a bigger event than we really had the space for.”
Even though openings can get hectic, they’re a testament to the impact that Gallery 16 has left on San Francisco’s art community. “The community is central to the whole project,” Williams says. “Without the support of the local art scene here, it wouldn’t have lasted six months.”
– Katie Fanuko