In this Episode of Art is Awesome, Host Emily Wilson spends time with San Francisco photographer Chloe Sherman.
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area.
This week, Emily features photographer Chloe Sherman, who shares her journey from Portland to San Francisco and her role in capturing the queer community of the 90s. Chloe's work, which portrays a time when the city's rents were affordable and its social spots thriving, has been exhibited internationally and highlighted in a well-received book. The episode also details how Chloe's daughter's social media efforts during the pandemic brought greater visibility to her art. The conversation delves into Chloe's inspirations, daily routines, and creative influences, with a mention of her show 'Renegades' at the Leica store in San Francisco.
About Artist Chloe Sherman:
Chloe Sherman (b. 1969, New York) is a San Francisco-based fine art photographer known for her vibrant portraits of queer life in San Francisco during the 1990s. As a vehement visual chronicler, Sherman captures an intimacy and vibrancy that brings a unique subculture to life, even decades later.
Sherman received her degree in fine art photography from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1999, during which time she began documenting a generation of young self-identified Queers. The community became family, and she reveled in their collective creativity, support, pride, and their strident defiance of cultural norms. This was the catalyst for an entire body of work that would go on to be recognized and shown internationally.
Sherman’s photographs, all shot on 35mm film, offer a window into an era of defiance, freedom, resilience, and tenderness, shedding light on the energy of San Francisco at a time when it was brimming with possibility. Her images are a throughline, anchoring viewers to a moment in Queer history and immortalizing moments of gender experimentation and joy.
Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at F³ Freiraum für Fotografie (Berlin), Schlomer Haus Gallery (San Francisco), Kunsthalle Nürnberg (Nuremberg), Leica San Francisco, and The Diego Rivera Gallery (San Francisco). She has been published extensively in Nothing But the Girl (ed. Susie Bright and Jill Posner; 1996), RESEARCH: Angry Women in Rock (Juno Books; 1996), Out In America (Viking Press; 1994), Rolling Stone Magazine, Interview Magazine, Deneuve, the Advocate, and the New Yorker. Sherman’s work is a part of the permanent collections at The National Gallery of Art, SF MOMA, and those of private collectors. In 2023, Hatje Cantz Verlag published a monograph of her work, Renegades: San Francisco – 1990s.
Visit Chloe's Website: ChloeShermanStudio.com
Follow Chloe on Instagram: @ChloeDSherman
Learn more about her Renegades exhibit at Leica Store San Francisco, CLICK HERE.
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About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:
Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women’s Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.
Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil
Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast
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CREDITS:
Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson.
Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions.
For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com
2024-1021 - AIA - EP036 - Chloe Sherman
Host Emily Wilson: [00:00:00] Art is Awesome can now be heard on KSFP 102. 5 FM every Friday at 9 a. m. and 7 p. m. Please follow the show and rate us wherever you get your podcast media. If you like what you hear from today's artist, you can find links and information about them in our show notes.
Artist Chloe Sherman: Deep in the middle of labor because you saw this moment like the mirrors and the reflections and people and she's like, wow, I have never before confirmed with any more clarity that you are an artist.
Host Emily Wilson: That's photographer Chloe Sherman, the guest on this week's episode of art. is awesome.
I'm your host, Emily Wilson. I'm a writer in San Francisco, often covering the arts, and I've been [00:01:00] meeting such great people that I created this bi weekly podcast to highlight their work. Chloe Sherman spent most of the 90s photographing San Francisco's queer community. Before, during, and after, she went to the San Francisco Art Institute.
Her photos show people at a time. When rents were affordable, they're on picnics in the park, at bars, having friends over playing pool, or hanging out in cars.
Artist Chloe Sherman: This was at a wedding. This was in a hair salon. This was at a bar. This was on tour with a band, the Lexington Club. A lot of these locations no longer exist in San Francisco.
Host Emily Wilson: Some of this work was in a show, Renegades, at San Francisco's Schlomer Haus Gallery in 2022. It led to an even bigger show in Berlin, and a book, which received a positive review from The New Yorker. Now, the Leica Store in downtown San [00:02:00] Francisco has a show called Renegades. of some of the thousands of photos Chloe took.
I met her there to see the work and talk about her moving to San Francisco the week after she visited, how noted photographer Catherine Opie recommended she go to the San Francisco Art Institute, and how the Schlomer Haus Gallery found her work online after her daughter put it on Instagram. In the early 90s, Chloe was living in Portland, Portland when she decided to move to San Francisco.
Artist Chloe Sherman: Now I get it. Ah, this is the, the greatest closest city and artistic and exciting, very inspirational and urban. So I came down one weekend and actually moved literally the next weekend. I was barely 20. So, there were no strings attached, easy to relocate, and I had no responsibilities at the [00:03:00] time and was searching for something exciting.
In San Francisco, Chloe showed work at a friend's cafe. The cafe was the Bearded Lady Truck Stop Cafe, Bearded Lady Cafe, Red Doras, had many names, and it was on 14th between Guerrero and Valencia. The storefront, of course, still exists. I think it's a hair salon now, but it was, at the time, just getting, barely opening its doors, I think, siphoning electricity from the street and borrowing espresso machines.It was just very shoestring.
Host Emily Wilson: Noted photographer Catherine Opie saw Chloe's photos.
Cathy Opie, who was there at the time, in the community, was next door. Beginning her photographic work of what became her daughter. Dyke series, a Dyke portrait series. We had mutual friends. She was next door setting up people for [00:04:00] portraits.
My work was on the wall at the cafe. They shared a back patio. So we were all going between the two locations, storefronts, and she was like, I love this work. I like your eye.
Host Emily Wilson: Opie suggested that Chloe go to the San Francisco Art Institute in North Beach
Artist Chloe Sherman: at the time, wide-eyed and open to anything. I was like, okay, that sounds great. What's the Art Institute? And basically biked up over the hill to check it out. Applied, got in and started. The Art Institute inspired her. It's up on the hill. There's Diego Rivera murals in the space. It's this gorgeous old stucco building. It's not just photography, it's painting and sculpture and multimedia, mixed media.
So showing up with negatives or prints to go down into the lab and make and have People talk about what they're seeing, what works, what doesn't work. I [00:05:00] found extremely helpful in advancing and understanding how to create a body of work that is interesting and that includes aspects that I may have overlooked.
Host Emily Wilson: Chloe knew many of the people she photographed, and she tried to capture the vibrancy and intimacy she saw.
Artist Chloe Sherman: One of the important things in my work is to kind of expose what I find to be beautiful and to show a side of people that I think is the edge and sometimes fringe of society, that is not always seen in a beautiful or kind of heroic light.
And I find that in people and I see that in people and I think it's important to me to. Try to make pictures that express that and allow other people, in a way, that other people can see what I see.
Host Emily Wilson: [00:06:00] Had thousands of negatives of the pictures in her closet. During the pandemic, her daughter saw her work online and made Chloe and Instagram account.
Artist Chloe Sherman: She's like, nobody knows who you are or how to tag you. Your stuff is out there kind of unclaimed. And so her and her closest friend on the back porch during the pandemic, I was like, well, If you guys want to help me figure this out, so basically they started my Instagram for me.
They were like, here, start posting here, take things out of the closet and just start adding to this wall of photos here. And so I got a scanner online during the pandemic, opened the door, started scanning, poorly scanning from home. After work, I was working at the time still, and would post, post, post. And people were so starved for community and for, I think, kind of nostalgia [00:07:00] and much of this work people had never seen because I had never printed or shown.
And back in the day, it's 35 millimeter film. If I didn't happen to choose a specific image to process, print, circulate, No eyes were ever on this work.
Host Emily Wilson: In June of 2022, the owners of the Schlomer Haus Gallery in the Castro offered Chloe a solo show after seeing the photos online. It was the first time some of the images had been printed.
Artist Chloe Sherman: That exhibit at Schlolmer Haus was monumental in revisiting much of this body of work and coming up with a new kind of like edit and way to have a more expansive view.
Host Emily Wilson: After the show at Schlomer House, a gallery in Berlin wanted to do a solo show of Chloe's work. They also wanted to make a book. Her first response was no way.
[00:08:00]
Artist Chloe Sherman: It was a near impossible feat to accomplish, and we did it. So basically in about, Three months, we pulled off creating this book, working around the clock. It meant me waking up at sometimes three, four in the morning to zoom them, like at the end of their day in Berlin and share ideas, go back and forth to DHL, passing sample prints and match prints and design ideas.
And it was very, very intense. I was also still working at the hospital at the time. And. Any waking hour, I wasn't. And when I got online with them, going back and forth with graphic design, I was at the lab. So it was a ton of work. It was worth every minute. I have no regrets. I had a lot of help. It was an amazing, really team of people.
And I have had this gorgeous book I feel really proud of that has meant a lot to a lot of people.[00:09:00]
Host Emily Wilson: This is the part of the show where I ask the guests the same three questions. They are. When did you know you were an artist? What is some work that had an impact on you? And what's the most creatively inspiring place in the Bay Area? Chloe says her family always called her an artist and she felt like one.But during her daughter's birth, it really sunk in.
Artist Chloe Sherman: One of my dearest friends, Tanya, was at the birth. of my child, along with my partner at the time. I was in the hospital in San Francisco, and it was sure a beautiful room with a view of the city. Of course, it still had a lot of medical things, and there was this big, I remember at one point looking up, and there's this convex mirror, this big wide angle mirror pointed down.
In, in the room and I said, somebody hand me my camera because I there I was giving birth to my child. I see this [00:10:00] mirror. I'm like, this is an incredible view. So I took a photo that I still have never to be shown to anybody, but for a personal purposes, but my friend Tanya at the time was like in retrospect, like she was reflecting and was like, you know what?
when you ask for your camera deep in the middle of labor because you saw this Moment like the mirrors and the reflections and people and the kind of like reflected view of the city. She's like wow I have never before confirmed with any more clarity that you are an artist. And I was like, Oh, thank you.
One of the strongest feelings that I remember having that I think has deeply influenced the work that I created here, this body of work, was having, books available to me. And this is one of the reasons why it has actually felt [00:11:00] really full circle to create a book. I found at, I think, probably Powell's Bookstore in Portland, a book by Della Grace.
It was printed early 90s, if not late 80s, called Love Bites. It was fantastic. Photography, Dell's photography, queer community, San Francisco, London. I felt such a connection and such a longing for something that I was witnessing in these photographs. It just was deeply culturally and emotionally and spiritually significant to me. It just was the book that really got me to San Francisco.
I'm so drawn to activity and people and chaos sometimes and energy. And something I do now is on my way to work. A day job [00:12:00] is, uh, I walked through the mission in the morning. And I am so intensely inspired every single morning for that 10 minute walk at 7 in the morning, 730 in the morning, because I'm whisked and swept up into the energy of people's morning routines, the Bustle of rush hour.
I walked down 24th street and shop owners are opening and sweeping in the waft of Fabulosa is as they're posing in the storefronts. And I am so excited and inspired. I see images. I, I often carry my camera with me in the, just for those morning moments.
Host Emily Wilson: Thank you so much for listening to Art is Awesome. And thank you to our guest, Chloe Sherman. Her show, Renegades, is on view at the [00:13:00] Leica store in Bush Street in downtown San Francisco until November 2nd. Please follow this show and join us next time when the guest will be Mark Bamuthi Joseph. A poet, playwright, dancer, and artistic director at the Kennedy Center.
Art is Awesome is a biweekly podcast coming out every other Tuesday. It's created and hosted by me, Emily Wilson. It is produced and edited by Charlene Gotu of Gotu Productions. It's carried on KSFP LP 102. 5 FM, San Francisco on Fridays at 9 a. m. Our theme music is provided by Kevin MacLeod with Incompetech Music.
Be sure and follow us on Instagram at [00:14:00] artisawesomepodcast or visit our website. Till next time.