Sean Laidlaw (or 'Teen' as his friends have been calling him for the past 30 years after an altercation at the skatepark when he was a kid) has been providing a platform for friends and international artists to showcase works in Vancouver for the past 8 years via his nomadic-style art space, Crack Gallery.
Serving as a local community hang out and a gateway into the world of art for young skateboarders and graffiti writers, Crack Gallery also provides offerings of merch, books and mixtapes housed under the same name while working on various projects on an international level.
To introduce Crack Gallery to Supply, we asked Sean a few questions.
When and how did Crack Gallery start?
It'll be 8 years ago at the end of this month. A local kid and an investor were trying to do a store here in Vancouver but it went out of business within its first year. They still had a few years left on the lease so two buddies and I thought we could do some stuff there and offered to help pay the rent for a bit, which meant we got access to this beautiful space in a cool part of town for a gallery.
That first year was kind of a blur. We had no idea what we we're doing we just started doing shows. We brought out people like Sean Powers and Weirdo Dave and then boom, within a year, that space was gone. It got rented to someone else. For my two buddies, Price and Briggs, that was the end of it.
Everyone went their separate ways and after curating an art show for Converse I realized I could just rent a space when there was a show to do, so that's kind of where not having a permanent space came from. That was the second year of Crack Gallery.
Tell us about some of the joys and difficulties of running the gallery nomadic?
Like any major city, The rent here is pretty expensive. I wouldn't want to have to do something every single month just to pay rent for an expensive space so I find the gallery flows a lot better finding a space when there's a show to do.
It keeps it more chill, and it's just a lot better way of doing it for me. Just doing the shows when they sort of come together with my friends is a way more chill vibe and I think it makes it more authentic. I think that shines through in what the gallery is doing.
How important to you is having a platform for your friends to show art?
It's amazing. The gallery sort of only works with friends anyway. It's all about friends working with friends. There’s kids that have been coming to crack gallery shows the whole 8 years. They were young kids when they started coming to the shows, just little skate rat kids. They come to the show and that's some of their first time ever being exposed to art in a gallery setting, like an entry point to art.
I think for a lot of them something clicks and they can relate. These are kids that I'm working with now and doing shows with years later. Everyone's a little bit older now but there's still young kids coming and everyone's friends. It just sort of worked out that way, It wasn't on purpose or anything, It just sort of happened. It feels like a blessing actually, one thing leads to another and you end up working with all these rad people.
What’s the story with the gallery space that caught on fire?
So after having that permanent space the first year I went on to using a space a couple of blocks away, a space I was able to use for five years before COVID hit in 2020 and I lost the space I had been doing shows in for those years. So when it kind of chilled a bit, I guess this would have been late spring, early summer 2021, I felt like I could safely get back to doing shows but I had to figure out a new space.
I used a couple of different spaces for a couple of different shows, even did a show outside on the sidewalk using the side of a building to hang the art, until I stumbled across 165 East Hastings in November 2021. This guy Jack Leonard was doing a show there and there was all these artists' studios in the building. That’s kind of how I discovered that space and started doing shows there. it was just a great space to have but on the worst, craziest, most insane block in our city.
It's a very, very surreal place downtown east side. it's a crazy place with lots of homelessness and for whatever reason, throughout the spring and summer, a lot of fires started happening down there. That space ended up burning down long story short and then once again, lost a good spot to do shows - that’s no big deal, I'll always find another space to do shows but more sad than that, there was a lot of artists that had studios in there that lost their life's work. My friend Jack lost 30 paintings in that fire. So I felt really bad for everyone that lost their work in that fire and that's what pushed my friend Matt and I to do that GoFundMe. To raise some money for all the artists that lost stuff in that fire.
What about the neighbour that came through and ran off with an artwork?
So the first time using that East Hasting Street space that burnt down, It was a show with my friend Mikey and my friend, Jack. For whatever reason, there's just fascinating graffiti down here and I know every city has it. My friend did a whole zine about it called Street Heat. It's just like the craziest messages. A lot of people down there don't have cell phones so they'll write each other messages on the walls and stuff. I find it really fascinating to read the stuff that's scrawled out there. Mikey really wanted to name the show “I love this Hell” from something he had seen on a wall. I liked it, Jack liked it, so we rolled with it. There was this shirt I always wanted when I was little. It was a plan B shirt like world industries era and It said I love Slayer.
We took that t-shirt graphic, The I Love Slayer, turned it into I Love this Hell then actually painted that graphic on the front of the building. There's an upstairs and a downstairs to this building. A bunch of artists had studios upstairs and it sort of seemed like all them were on the same level as us at the gallery but for whatever reason, one of the artists upstairs really caught feelings over us painting that sign. It was a big sign that said "I love this hell," and it's pretty much in the worst neighborhood in Canada. I guess this guy just didn’t like us being there. He just looked at us as stoner, skate-punks. We didn't really know any of this was going on, but the second night, I guess, he snuck in and stole one of Jack's pieces. To make matters worse, he said, "Yeah, I stole it. I took it into the alley and I smashed it into a million pieces." And it had sold. Jack had sold that thing to one of his friends.
We loved flicking through Estetica Del Crimen, can you tell us a little about how the book came to be?
Well, right before COVID hit, I went down to Mexico City to see my friend Chito’s show. He was doing a show for Mexico City art week. While I was there I met this guy Javier and we became really good friends. After keeping in touch through COVID I went back down there and I met Omar that does EDC. The three of us hung out a lot and decided that we would do an EDC show in Vancouver and make a book. Omar had been collecting those images for 10 years and Javs is a bookmaker. He did Chito’s book and he also did a really crazy book that's impossible to find about the history of graffiti in Mexico City, so that was kind of it.
We worked on it for 10 months. Omar providing his content, Jav’s laying out the book and figuring out where to print it and then me facilitating a book release up here in Vancouver. It was just friends working with friends again and trying to put a rad book into the world. Crack Gallery's made a bunch of zine's over the years, but making an actual offset printed book, it seemed like the next thing to do and pretty stoked on how it turned out.
Books are really nice things to have and they're timeless. They don't expire. So it's rad to finally put something like that into the world. Omar and Javs came to Vancouver for the book release and then we flew to Toronto to do a soft launch at Better. They got to see two Canadian cities for the first time. And it was pretty rad.
What kind of approach do you take to the merchandise side of Crack Gallery?
It's just myself or friends and homies. All these kids are always up to something, whether they're painting or drawing, and it all comes together pretty naturally. Crack Gallery will always be an art gallery, first and foremost, but the idea of these little offerings is a way to spread the damage a bit more and give people around the world an opportunity to have a little piece of what we're doing.
I approach it the same way as putting on these shows. I can choose stuff from their body of work that I think will work well in these little offerings and then I'll have ideas that I want to put out myself, so sometimes I'll make some stuff, It’s a balance of both. They come together pretty easily to be honest. It's really about just making the art we're already showing more accessible and available. Not everyone can afford a $1000 or $10,000 painting, but most kids can afford a t-shirt.
Will you do other bootlegs like Husker Du one in future? And what informs this process – nostalgia, or just wanting to have a 80s band t-shirt that actually fits?
Yeah I probably have four or five more on deck. I might do a little offering soon. I like doing those a lot. It’s more about just making a shirt I want to wear myself but a lot of times with those bootlegs I don't even end up getting one, they sell out so fast.
They might be insanely expensive if they existed or maybe never existed. That Husker Du shirt was the UK 7" cover of that single. I'm not too sure if they ever made a T-shirt of that cover so I can't even say Husker Du made that shirt, maybe they did, I don't know. But the bootlegs are fun. It's just like another extension of the gallery, and it's more all me, not the kids input.
What albums are playing in the studio this week?
The way I listen to music has changed so much from say 10 or 20 years ago. It used to be like just put a record on or put a tape in a cassette deck and listen to the whole thing. But It's not really been about listening to full albums the last little while. It's more about listening to a lot of mixes on soundcloud and just a lot of songs just off YouTube. But if I have to sort of put it to albums, I've been listening to the soundtrack to the H-Street videos a lot.
It brings me back and it just stokes me out, like all the songs from Hokus Pokus - I’ve been listening to that soundtrack a lot lately. Not to give away one of the next bootlegs but I’ve been listening to Company Flow - Funcrusher Plus a lot lately too.
Can we expect another Crack Mix any time soon?
There's some sort of things on the back burner, but nothing imminent. Hopefully I can get one or two out this year. That was just a thing I did when COVID hit. Just another way to keep the gallery going when I couldn't do actual shows. Music's just so rad and a good extension of the gallery, like these little offerings we have with the shirts and the hats and stuff. It’s just another little part of the gallery that we do.
Any exciting projects coming up this year to look out for?
There's this thing with Den in Thailand this weekend, That’s kind of the first thing this year. Then doing a show with this kid Finley That I've been working on over the last little while. It's just this young skater graffiti kid from Victoria, sort of homies with all the homies. That would be February 2nd. Then there's a show in the spring sometime and then those Den guys want to come here, maybe in the summer to do something. It's kind of like one thing leads to another.
I'm definitely not trying to do a show every month between all the other stuff. I'm shooting for six shows a year. That’s kind of where I'm at. I think six is where I kind of max out. I enjoy doing this. I don't look at it as a job, It's kind of like what I do every day anyways but I think any more than six would just be too much, especially with these offerings we're doing now. All that stuff takes time and it takes away from doing shows but it also helps to get the stuff out there and spread the damage that the gallery's doing already.
Interview by Jesse Hoole, Images via Crack Gallery.
Thank you to Sean for taking the time.