User:Jeffrogulch/Born to Lurk

BORN to LURK Was an art collective/group active in San Francisco from 2002 to 2010. It consisted of six members (Jake Skokie, Bastien Grassins, Jean Williams, Antonie Gres, Inez Yerbes, Matthew Novak aka Untamed Buffalo) almost all of whom were transplants to the city from the Midwest and Europe. They were mainly "low Brow" street, skateboard and film artists (although Bastien Grassins and Antonie Gres attended Le Femis in Paris and Jean Williams went to Rhode Island School of Design)

HISTORY ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— The group met and worked out of a eight room Victorian in the Western Addition neighborhood of San Francisco which had housed artists from schools like the San Francisco Art Institute and California College of Arts on a revolving basis for some twenty years, most notably Barry McGee, until the residents were evicted in 2010. With the lack of a base/cheap housing to continue to create the group scattered and disbanded. Drugs and alcohol had also taken it's toll, the death of Bastien Grassins in early 2009 from a drug overdose and the alcoholism and disappearance in the same year of Jake Skokie and Jean Williams (chronicled in the documentary film "Jean and Jake" 2010 which was shown at Festival De Cannes Court Du Metrage) The film although containing only a small portion of what the group did seems to be the sum total of the groups work and all that remains after almost a decade of collaboration.

Although they were around at the same time none of these artists are considered members of the Mission School or any other movement or style. Much of their work on the streets of San Francisco has not survived, either being destroyed or painted over. Almost all their work has survived through the films of Matthew Novak and Antoine Gres as well as the photographs of Inez Yerbes.