It may be impossible to know how many artists and art lovers have been brought together over the past 20-plus years at the monthly First Fridays art walks in downtown San Jose or the massive SubZERO fest every June.
But while the cultural scene that has developed over those two decades includes countless muralists, zine creators, metal workers, painters, poets and postcard designers, it all started with two people: Anno Domini founders Cherri Lakey and Brian Eder.
“Our role is not lost on us,” Eder said, “We’re here to help artists do all this.”
Brian Eder, co-owner at Anno Domini gallery, picks a painting by Zack Luchetti for a tribute exhibition called “Illuminate the Wolves” at the gallery in downtown San Jose in March of 2023. . (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)
Ironically, neither Lakey nor Eder considers themselves artists, but their creativity shines as the curators of cool in downtown San Jose. Putting together a monthly art walk — one that survived a pandemic and grew to the point that its original name, South First Fridays, was geographically limiting — is no small feat. Coupling that with a two-day summer street fair that brings out not just artists but bands, artisan designers, vinyl record hounds and caricaturists is a work of art all its own.
The Anno Domini origin story certainly doesn’t follow a straight line — it’s more like a Moebius strip. It starts in downtown San Jose’s storied Cactus Club, where Lakey and Eder first met, heads up to Portland, Ore., where she moved, and then back to Mountain View, where they lived together above a welder in a converted warehouse near a Tower Records and a coffee shop, where they first curated artwork.
The pivot point is in San Francisco in the 1990s. They were both working at a pre-press house, where Lakey was often transfixed by street art of a man painted on a building along the waterfront. One day, it was painted over with beige squares.
“I was really upset,” said Lakey, who later found out it was street art created by Barry McGee, then going by his moniker Twist. “I didn’t know what it was, but I wanted more of that in my life.”
Brian Eder, left, and Cherri Lakey, owners of Anno Domini gallery, stand outside the Anno Domini during The 17th annual SubZERO festival in downtown San Jose, Calif., on Friday, June 5, 2026. (Shae Hammond/Bay Area News Group)
When they were both let go from their jobs, they made their way to San Jose and opened Anno Domini in a brick warehouse on 150 S. Montgomery St. in 2000. They had no interest in being a gallery that rotated “safe” art on the same crystal white walls every month. Urban contemporary art was their forte.
“There was an activism to it,” Lakey said. “We never called it a gallery. That’s what it was, but we didn’t call it that. It was a place to get together.”
First Thursday openings were an art gallery trend at the time, Lakey said, but it didn’t make sense to them.
“Our friends all had jobs and had to work in the morning,” she said.
Instead, they held their openings on the first Friday of the month, when they could stay up late and not worry about an alarm clock the next morning. In a fairly abandoned part of town near Diridon Station, they were quietly rebuilding the counterculture in a city where it seemed to have died — even if they didn’t realize it.
People listen to Luck Fever during The 17th annual SubZERO festival in downtown San Jose, Calif., on Friday, June 5, 2026. (Shae Hammond/Bay Area News Group)
In October 2005, they moved into the former Camera One theatre at 366 S. First St., a one-auditorium movie house known for showing art films. They spent a few months transforming the place before their first opening in February 2006 and realized that there were few places open besides bars where their arty friends could go in the gritty SoFA district on a Friday night. So they called the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, MACLA and Works/San Jose to see if they would stay open late and offer free admission. They said yes, and South First Fridays was born.
Over the past 20 years, Eder and Lakey have continued to manage the Anno Domini gallery, the First Fridays art walk and the SubZERO festival. They also curated Phantom Galleries, a nomadic art gallery that filled empty spaces downtown, and established Kaleid, a fine art gallery that originally filled an empty space adjacent to San Jose City Hall and has since moved to fill a vacant space in the former Valley Title building just down the block from Anno Domini.
The “Homage” mural celebrating Olympic sprinters John Carlos and Tommie Smith next to the Chevron Station on Santa Clara and Fourth Streets in San Jose, Calif., is touched up in August of 2024, by original artist Paul Urich (lower left), with the help of Brian Eder (in the cherry picker), Steven Reece and Cherri Lakey. (Karl Mondon/ Bay Area News Group)
Through their production agency, Curatus, they have helped beautify San Jose’s walls — they were behind both the original “Homage” mural honoring Olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos and its recent restoration — and its streets. After San Jose turned a portion of downtown’s Post Street into a pedestrian mall, they found artist Danny Feliz Hanson, whose unicorn-themed street mural “Romance” was a colorful fit for the bourgeoning Qmunity district, catering to the city’s LGBTQ scene.
It all adds up to making San Jose a more interesting city than it might have otherwise been. Lakey points out that every city has malls and restaurants, but it needs unique places and events where visitors can find its culture:
“We don’t go to other cities to see what their version of the Gap is.”