“It’s an amazing honor to be a part of this really large, established annual event, and it’s exciting for newer, upcoming galleries and artists to get to be shown and exposed,” photographer Chloe Sherman told 48 Hills. “And vice versa for collectors and people to have easy access to newer, younger, or less known artists. It’s an exciting time for both parties.”
Sherman, who recently released a much-lauded book, Renegades: San Francisco, The 1990s, full of photos of queer people in the Mission that she took when she was a student at the San Francisco Art Institute, is referring to FOG Design+Art, one of San Francisco’s biggest art fairs, which took over Fort Mason from January 18-21.
This year, on its 10th anniversary, nine galleries—five from the Bay Area—were invited to exhibit at SFAI’s former building. A new program, FOG Focus, primarily showcased younger, underrepresented artists, as Sherman mentioned. Speaking just a couple hours into the fair, Sherman said she’d already had some fascinating conversations and made some connections with collectors and people with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Sherman was standing at the booth representing Schlomer Haus Gallery, the queer-centric gallery Steffan Schlarb and husband Brandon Romer opened in the Castro in 2021. After seeing Sherman’s work on Instagram, they offered her a solo show in 2022, which led to her book.
Championing an artist like Sherman is something smaller galleries like his can do, Schlarb said.
