Last year, someone pointed me to The Beholder, an amazing online gallery based in San Francisco… and it was love at first click. So many fantastic artists all in one place! Leigh Wells, Martha Rich, Jennifer Sanchez, Jennifer Davis, Mike Monteiro… shall I go on?  Yep, that’s when I knew I was officially jealous of Suzanne Shade, Director & Curator of The Beholder. About five minutes after finding her site, I was writing a post about it. Not only does she have fabulous taste, but she’s also incredibly nice! Don’t you just love it when that happens?

Anyway, enough about really talented, super nice curators who make me jealous… here’s a curator that makes Suzanne jealous {I’ll let her add the adjectives}:

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I’m jealous of Folkert Gorter

When you think of what a curator does (and I’ve been thinking a lot of that recently) it’s pretty simple: you are drawn by something, and you want to share it with the world. And sometimes, happily, the act of sharing helps you to discover what about that thing made you love it in the first place.

The really hard part about curating is giving your audience not only what you think is good, but giving them a way to see something that they may not have seen on their own. Crafting that moment where a work becomes so vividly clear: Ahhh yes. I GET IT now.

Folkert Gorter is one of those curators who can do that to you every time. That’s where the jealous part comes in. Folkert helps run a blog called “But Does It Float?”  His method is simple. He marries a ‘title’ (pulled quotes from folks like Bertolt Brecht and Jan Tschichold) which often are illuminating in themselves. He pairs that with the work of a selected artist. As the images float onto the screen, you are lifted up… it’s so addicting to scroll down a whole page and have it happen time after time.

Folkert is a Dutch interaction designer living in Los Angeles, and besides being an amazing curator, he’s also one of the founding creators of Cargo Collective, a web tool that powers a variety of creative communities in the fields of Education, Design, Research, and Conceptual Art. He’s the designer behind a site called Space Collective: The Future of Everything, and also developed a publishing platform for Good Magazine.

Oh, and did I mention that he’s also totally adorable?

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Adorable. Damn, I wish I’d put that in my list of adjectives! I’ll add that to your list Suzanne ; )

Thanks so much for this amazing post!