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6.1C 2. SJ PG ARTICLES IN THE ~tte 6 Sun, Jan. 19, 2003 - San Jose Mercury News, Arts & Entertainment section. Artists nil in the blanks in downtown S.]. By Jack Fischer Mercury News Visual Arts Editor After nearly two decades of San Jose's redevelopment agency struggling to fill downtown's storefronts, it seems a small design firm has found the way to do it. Really, it's a wonder no one thought of it before: City leaders hate nothing so much as the blank stare of a vacant retail window, and local artists love nothing so much as a place to show their work. Phantom Galleries is a program nm by a local graphic design firm called Two Fish Design that gives unrented storefronts to Bay Area artists to exhibit their art for free. "We got so tired of looking at empty windows every day," says Cherri Lakey, co-owner of Two Fish, which conceived of and runs the program as part of its membership in a cooperative of downtown groups called Populus Presents, created to foment events in the city core. "We've been kicking it around for a couple years," Lakey says. The galleries began appearing last August at just a few locations around San Fernando and South First streets, and momentum has been picking up since then, Now 16 artists are- .showing work in 10 store- fronts near those corners, and Lakey says Populus has its eyes on another eight to 10 downtown. (Quite on its own, the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, for many months now, has offered a window installation program it calls Night Moves, after-hours exhibits of new-media art, often video- based, in each of the institute's two storefront windows. The window on First Street has "Drip Drop: Life and Age" by Jeanne Finley and John Muse. The Market Street window has Chris Eckert's strobe- lit, kinetic sculpture "Perpetual Labor,") The Phantom Galleries work has ranged from fairly modest and conventional watercolors and ceram- ics to the wilder wire sculptures of Francisco Graciano, whose obsessive and engaging series of con- nected faces fills the windows of 25 W. San Fernando, Down the street, at 80 S. First, Susan O'Malley offers "Susie's Supermart," a faintly subversive installation that initially appears to showcase the store's products, but on closer inspection proves to be merchandise a few peculiar degrees off plumb, such as the arms of dolls, a dental retainer and a thermostat. At 70 S. First, artist Ellie Brown offers "Girl/Woman/Girl," a collection of exotic pink dresses and other girls' and women's clothes that resonate as clothing store merchandise but -- in part because they are all pink -- also serve as a subtle exploration of cultural expectations for women. "People walk by and some of them like something and some of them hate it, but at least they're talk- ing about art," says Two Fish co-owner Brian Eder. At first, the galleries mostly consisted of framed work standing in the windows. But with increasing frequency, the artists are creating installations specificaHy for the windows, making more inventive use of the space. "We knew we had to start that way" -- with the conventional, framed work -- "and then ramp it up," Eder says. I. .._ "'_.II_-t_... t'__ I.........^ / 4