Visual Arts

Edicola, a New Kind of Newsstand, Opens on Market Street

By Carmen Winant | Jul 12, 2012

Have you ever had a vastly imaginative project idea -- for an innovative business say, or a collective -- that seemed genius, but never actually got off the ground? Beginning with the car wash business that I never started when I was ten years old, I've had about one a week. Upon learning of the Edicola newsstand in San Francisco, started by the artists Luca Antonucci and Carissa Potter, I was impressed; it is one of those rare projects that is not only inspired and original, but has been successfully realized.

Antonucci and Potter met when they were graduate students at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2008. Potter, feeling a certain affinity for her classmate, approached him with a proposition. "I had this crazy idea to ask him to be in a video with me where I told him that I liked him without knowing anything about him," she said. The video didn't turn out too well, but the two have been friends ever since. Together they launched both Colpa Press and Edicola, a newsstand that sells a curated selection of artists' books, newspapers and prints. That's not the only thing that makes the newsstand unique: the store is run out of a formerly closed San Francisco Chronicle kiosk on Market Street in bustling downtown San Francisco. I can't think of a less obvious -- and more conspicuous -- place to launch a creative business venture.

Shabazz Projects, You Will Live Forever.

Every independent, public project -- for or non-profit -- is realized with some combination of navigating city bureaucracy and seeking help from friends. Edicola has experienced both phenomena; it was realized with the help of Zoe Taleporos, a graduate of California College of the Art's curatorial program, who connected the two with Daniel Hutardo at the Central Market Community Benefit District. After "lots of meetings, permits, laborious detail ironing," says Antonucci, they were handed the keys to the 6th street kiosk. "The next challenge," Potter said, "was finding artists to donate their work and be involved." They did find artists, and good ones, at that; Edicola sells books by artists and groups, Lay Flat, Eric William Carroll, Halley Loman, Shabazz Projects, Frau Grau, Pablo Guardiola, Ryan De La Hoz, We Still Like, Claudia De La Torre, and Owl + Tiger Books, among them.

Ryan De La Hoz, Welcome to Your Doom.

With this fantastic and deep collection of printed matter, Antonucci and Potter remind us that print is not dead. Still, mainstream journalism has undeniably moved towards utilizing online media. It's a circumstance that Antonucci argues is actually good for artists: "People talk about it as a bad thing, but all it did was open up this neglected medium for the rest of us. We can afford to buy a letterpress because no one else wants it."

Public Fiction, Issue #2 Gold Rush

Their 6th and Market Street location has its risks and rewards. Antonucci jocularly compares inhabiting the area to being "settlers in the Wild West staking a claim. There is a real sense of lawlessness on Central Market." At first, the two were nervous about sitting alone for long hours on the crowded and often unpredictable street (Potter admitted that she was "initially really nervous to open a space there"). However, they have been delightfully surprised. The people on Market Street have been wonderful to us," said Potter. "There is a sense that we are all in this together." In addition to the passerby's warm welcome, the two have felt profound support from the creative community in the Bay Area. Edicola's fundamental mission is to engender visibility for other artists who otherwise feel the commercial system is ineffective, limiting, exclusive, and expensive. "To make our job helping other artists... that's a dream," said Antonucci.

Edicola is open Tuesday through Friday 4-7pm and Saturday and Sunday 12-6pm. They are currently participating in the Conveyor Arts Pop-up Bookshop at Photoville in Brooklyn, NYC. Additionally, their kiosk will host a book signing on July 13, 2012 from 6-8pm with many of their participating artists. Edicola will also participate in "Yerba Buena Night" on October 13, 2012. For more information visit colpapress.wordpress.com.

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