[caption id="attachment_971" align="alignnone" width="560" caption="Co-Director of the SCOPE foundation"][/caption]
WHITEWALL: The foundation has always done something during the fair but this is the first time you’ve had this kind of wing, correct?
LILAH FREEDLAND: We’ve done a few artists projects and auctioned off collector mentorship but we’ve never done something like this. In Miami there was an artist named Mr. Brainwash who made posters and I was selling them for the foundation. I’m an artist and never sell drawings and when I do I mourn them. After Miami I realized: multiples. Duh. So I immediately signed up for a silkscreen class and my friends who are all artists are going to make silk screens, and I’ll sell it at SCOPE in New York because we all need money right now and if I give 70% to the artists and 30% to the foundation it’d be great.
WW: Were the artists that you asked to participate happy to get involved?
LF: Oh yeah, these are 99% my friends, and a few people who I knew who’s work I really loved.
WW: And what perfect timing, we all seem to be hit by the economy.
LF: The other inspiration was when it came out that Obama had raised the most money using the smallest denominations of donations.
After Miami I realized, 'Multiples, duh!' So I immediately signed up for a silk screening class
WW: And it opens up a whole new world of art supporters.
LF: Exactly.
WW: Artist don’t always feel comfortable being so present at art fairs – they can sometimes feel like a mall for art. Did you find that the artists you asked to participate in “Cheap Fast and Out of Control” were more comfortable with the idea that this was allowing more of the public to get involved?
LF: Very much so and the economy helps. And I think when it’s contextualized, when there is a curatorial idea over the whole thing, gives somebody something to stand behind in the sense that “Oh, my work can be cheap in there because it’s ‘Cheap Fast and Out of Control.’"
WW: Alexis Hubshman, the director of SCOPE is your husband. What is the dynamic like between you two?
LF: Since the fair has started, I’ve always done something, mostly performance. I’m a performance artist and I do installation and conceptual work. I always do something like that and I got really burnt out on it. And then I got this idea and decided it was a good project for the foundation.
