Walk up to a vending machine at Cooperage Brewing Company in Santa Rosa and you will not find chips or candy bars behind the glass. Instead, rows of postcard-size artwork wait to be dispensed, part of a project called Chain Letter Gallery that is turning a routine beer run into a small art-buying experience.
The machine is the creation of Lesley Fontanilla, an artist, Sonoma State art graduate and transitional housing coordinator for foster youth at TLC Child & Family Services, according to The Press Democrat. Fontanilla found the machine for sale on Craigslist and picked it up from a storage unit in Napa, the outlet reports. She first encountered art-dispensing vending machines while traveling, including a stop in Las Vegas’ arts district, an experience that stuck with her long enough to inspire her own version.
Fontanilla told the Press Democrat she wanted a way to preserve the sense of community she found in art school and to give other artists a platform to share their work. She said the vending machine has a personal and exciting quality that people have lost, and described the whole setup as a fun, quirky way to introduce people to art. That philosophy extends to who gets to see it: Chain Letter Gallery aims to make art available to people who may not otherwise visit galleries or museums, per the same account.
What’s Inside the Machine Right Now
The machine currently stocks work from two artists: Fontanilla herself and Ricky Watts, a muralist known for large-scale work on buildings around Sonoma County, including pieces at Tía María Panadería and Riley Street Art Supply. Watts worked on a mural at Tía María Panadería y Pastelería during a mural festival in the Roseland neighborhood in June 2022, and his larger designs are now sold as smaller-scale prints inside the machine. Fontanilla’s own offerings include linocut prints of an anatomically correct heart and a portrait of David Lynch, the report notes…