The San Jose Phantom Galleries program was launched in 2000 as a partnership between Two Fish Design, San Jose Downtown Association and the San Jose Redevelopment Agency. It was (and still is!) our intention to utilize empty downtown storefronts as local artists exhibit spaces in an effort to minimize the bleak scenery of vacant ground floor windows with the maximum impact of celebrating the creative talent that resides here.

It is true that there is much progress being made downtown with new residential developments that will include "mixed use" ground floor retail and there are fewer empty windows that are in the state of blight as was the case five years ago. But it also means more and more construction walls that can be activated as temporary murals, private buildings that could house exhibits in between tenants and Phantom Galleries can provide a referral service to business owners that would like art exhibits in their spaces as a way to support local artists, but also provide their customers with interesting atmosphere that changes throughout the year.

This evolution of the Phantom Galleries' website will focus more on the activities from this day on (as opposed to archiving the last six years) there will be updates each week in the form of current exhibits, artist's news, exhibit opportunities and calls for entries submitted by third parties. We'll also point to examples of other cities utilizing the Phantom concept.

Feel free to contact us any time with news, feedback and/or comments to our posts, we'd love to hear from you.

peace and care,
Cherri Lakey & Brian Eder