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Convos with the creative folk shaping the arts and culture in the San Francisco Bay Area. Hosted by Shawna Vesco Ahern.
when I came to the city it was a house party and a street performer named Toth Dance naked in his backyard with his violin.
Anne: watching the Art Institute close. Ccc, CCA Close. The Mission Cultural Center galleries. Uh. That has all just broken my heart. Anger is definitely [00:01:00] understandable. Grief is real. But if we hold them too tightly, our hands are not free to build.
Shawna Vesco Ahern: The night before Valentine's Day artists gathered at Soma Arts to talk about saving the San Francisco art scene, which if you think about it, is a very romantic thing to do. This wasn't a policy meeting. It wasn't really a fundraiser, though. Five to $25 was welcome. It felt more like couples therapy. So I asked people three questions.
When did you fall in love with San Francisco's art scene? What broke your heart and why are you still here?
Anne: I was just amazed. I had not been inside many artists studios up until that point. So the fact that you could walk in and see how people worked and what they did and talked to them was just an [00:02:00] incredible thing for me. And that's pretty much where I fell in love and I thought, wow, this is where I wanna keep practicing my arts.
Spencer: So it started, I first came to SF with my parents on vacation when I was seven years old. Wow. And like, you know, my nose was stuck to the glass, so I watched the trolleys and the hills and fog and I just thought, this place is cool. And then we came back again when I was 14 for a vacation.
And this time I was also transfixed, but it was different. I thought everyone looks so cool. Mm-hmm. Why do they look so cool? Yeah. Like what they're wearing and. What they look like and like, there's music all over the place. Yeah. Everyone's just doing their thing. Being themselves. Yes. Yeah. And it was normal.
Yeah, it was expected. Yeah. Just whoever you are, I don't know. You'd be you and, and you are good enough to be who you are.
sarah: I would call myself a self-proclaimed weirdo.
Okay. That tracks. Yeah. Many people are, and San Francisco was like, okay. Game. Yeah. You know, like it wasn't like, it wasn't too pretentious to be like, oh, it has to be this type of like hoity-toity yard or it can't be like this weirdo, you know, like it has to be a, a specific point of view. Like San Francisco was [00:03:00] really like, bring your weird here.
Yes. We're not like self like destructive in that way. No. The bar's just about doing your weird, even weirder as you keep weirding it. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's like people, like in some ways it was like, oh, that's not weird. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. Um, and so yeah, it was the San Francisco art scene I think like really I think pushes me and pushes a lot of my friends who are artists to like inter
I like mingle art forms.
Fuzz E Grant: I think when I first moved here about 15 years ago. Yeah. And you know, you'd see people walking down the street just being themselves.
Oh my God, I've heard that so much tonight that the most attractive thing about the SF art scene is just being weird, being authentic in that weirdness. Yeah. And you're, it's, it's more than, you're even allowed to be weird. It's, you are encouraged to be weird.
Dion: I was really jaded when I first moved here.
I thought like I'd moved from New York, I'd worked in the [00:04:00] arts, uh, an art auction. And I was like, I don't think this is for me. For sure. Where are my museum openings? Where are my gallery parties? And then realized like, wait, we're different. You here, we're just lowkey and it's different. And like everything is happening and it's.
Actually much more intimate and that's what I love about it. And put away those cute shoes. 'cause you're hoofing it everywhere. Oh God. Oh lord. I haven't pulled out a heel in a minute, so, so wait, so you're still here. What are your hopes and dreams for this relationship going forward? Yeah. Well actually I'm in a long distance relationship.
Oh no. Wow. I still love the Bay Area. I come back for the arts. I came back for the ballet and for art events. Mm-hmm. I have like currently in Madison, Wisconsin. And so when I come back for the arts, that's how much I love it. This is the deepest commitment I've heard this evening.
Shawna Vesco Ahern: In speaking with folks last night, what struck me almost immediately is that nobody fell in love with a funding stream. nobody said I fell in love with the municipal budget. They fell in love with walking into open studios for the first time. They fell in love with seeing how people worked with the [00:05:00] door left open for anyone to come through.
They fell in love with a city that said, bring your weird here not tone it down, not polish it first, but make your weird, weirder. They fell in love with intimacy, with being able to walk into a room and talk to the person who made the thing with running into poets in knife shops, uh, with naked violinists in backyards.
They fell in love with the place where you could look around and think, oh, I can be myself here and maybe even become more myself here.
But like any long relationship, there were breakups, there were rough patches. People talked about watching institutions close, about beloved venues disappearing, about friends leaving for Portland, Detroit, New York, Austin, about the quiet math of being an artist here. Peanut butter sandwiches or [00:06:00] marry the rich.
There was grief in the room. Grief for spaces, grief for teachers, grief for the sense that art is being treated as ornamental when it has always felt essential, and underneath it all was a question. If this city loves innovation so much, why does it forget that art is one of its oldest technologies?
Anne: watching the Art Institute close. Mm-hmm. Watching CCS close. Yeah. Ccc, CCA Close. Mm-hmm. The Mission Cultural Center galleries. Uh. That has all just broken my heart.
sarah: one of our great venues, uh, piano fight.
Oh, I loved piano fight. I've had so many drunken evenings there. I know. And I bet a lot of the heartbreaks are around venues oh, this is actually a really SF very story piano fight was the first time I ever used a gender neutral bathroom. Wow. And I was like, I just [00:07:00] remember it being like, this is a, this is like a special place and like this is special. friends doing pop-up shows there and like it just being a place that like kind of coalesced a lot of, again, just like mishmash, melding of arts and performance. Yeah. And so when it closed, I mean it like really changed the landscape
Martine: I think my heartbreaks are that like so many people, it's um, it's, it's hard, you know, like it's hard to make a living.
Like I had this like very brutal conversation with an artist friend when she was like, I tell my students Like either enjoying peanut butter sandwiches or marry Rich. Yeah. You know, those are your two options. Mm-hmm. And, and that's really tough. And, and it is kind of real, you know, it's hard to be, you can't really be a middle class artist, so you just kind of have to either like make it a side thing or, or like decide that you're really like on the side of peanut butter sandwiches.
Stephanie: Art is a necessity. It is a necessity for human blooming. It is a important thing for human flourishing. Um, and so [00:08:00] to see and hear and understand that, um, the people who have money here in San Francisco are not taking care of the necessity of art and the creation of art and the, um, importance of protecting artists is really sad.
Shawna Vesco Ahern: But then something shifted when Maria Jensen, executive Director of Soma Arts stood up, executive director in title, but honestly like executive poet. Um. She talked about a lot of things, but she talked the most about loss. She didn't talk about it like a catastrophe. She talked about it like a clearing.
She said that grief reminds us what we love, and she said something I haven't been able to stop thinking about if we hold our anger or our hurt too tightly, our hands aren't free to build.
Maria Jensen: Loss is a strange phenomenon. It often arrives without warning. It's uninvited. It disrupts the [00:09:00] familiar scatters, our certainties, like wind blowing, like falling leaves. We stand there and wake in the dust asking ourselves What just happened?
Who are we now? What remains? And yet, if we are brave enough to look closely, which I know this community is capable of, loss is also a clearing. Today, the San Francisco Arts community stands in such a clearing. We have lost spaces, funding audiences, rhythms and rituals. We once relied on, we have lost colleagues to other cities.
We have lost a sense of stability. The ground has shifted beneath our feet.
Artists are professional dreamers.
They design worlds out of air and courage. They compass harmonies from tension. They choreograph patterns from chaos. If artists can imagine it vividly enough, collectively enough, we can begin to shape it. So San Francisco has always been a city of dreamers from radical social justice movements to our vibrant murals, [00:10:00] underground theaters, pulsating performance spaces, concerts that shake foundations.
This city has practiced reinvention as an art form. We are not strangers to transformation. So the question is not whether we can rebuild. The question is how if we rush to fix, to patch, to recreate what was, we may miss the deeper opportunity. This is not a moment to scramble back to yesterday. This is a moment to explore, to discover, to dream together.
What if we treat this whole thing as a vast citywide conversation where we ask the critical question? What does sustainability really look like? And I say really look like, what is our survival plan? What systems allow us to thrive, to rest, to experiment without constant or parity? What would an arts ecosystem look like if it was truly inclusive, rooted in empathy and partnership?
If every neighborhood felt ownership, if every culture felt seen, if access was [00:11:00] not an afterthought, but a foundation, we cannot build that alone. Collaboration is not a strategy on a slide deck. No, no, no. It is a practice. It is listening across differences. It is sharing resources. It is co-creating rather than competing.
It is choosing partnership rather than pride. Advocacy must be part of our artistry. We must tell every story of why the arts are not ornamental. But essential. Essential to public health, to education, to economic vitality, to civic imagination. We must work hand in hand with our city partners, our foundations, our businesses, our educators.
And every single person in this room has a role to play. The work asks something of us. It asks us to let go of bitterness, to release the easy narratives of blame. Anger is definitely understandable. Grief is real. But if we hold them too tightly, our hands are not free to [00:12:00] build. So what if we harness our grief as fuel?
What if we let our joy be a compass? Grief reminds us of what we love, and joy reminds us of what's possible. This is our moment to come together, know up to retreat into silos, but to gather, to listen deeply, to articulate a shared vision and mission that is bold, healthy, sustainable, inclusive. The ashes are still warm.
The clearing is still open. Let us step into it together. Let's not build just what was, but what could be. Let us rise not as isolated organizations, but as living, thriving, collaborative ecosystem and let the next chapter of San Francisco Arts community be written by all of us in partnership, in negotiation, in shared purpose.
So the stage is bare. The lights are waiting. It's time to create.
Shawna Vesco Ahern: That's the hard part, isn't it? [00:13:00] How do you grieve something without gripping it so tightly that you can't create anything new? Because artists know something about this. When a piece doesn't turn out the way you imagined, you don't set the studio on fire. You start again. San Francisco has always been a city of reinvention, of boom and bust of pendulum swings, but it's also been a city of people who refuse to disappear quietly.
People who host comedy shows in Taco Bell, who start art markets inspired by public transit, who take over waterboards with poetry.
Who fill biotech hallways with paintings because the walls are too empty. People who show up on a Wednesday night in February and say, we are still here.
What I heard that night wasn't just nostalgia, it was commitment. People said they weren't going anywhere. They want more murals, more housing for artists, more public investment, more risk. They want art in the classrooms, art and tech buildings, art and empty [00:14:00] storefronts. They want a city where ideas meet less friction and they're willing to fight for it.
Stella: talk to each other. I know, right? Share phone numbers, make plans. This can't and won't be the last time we're all in the same room together.
we're here because we refuse to disappear quietly. We're the ones that make San Francisco and the Bay Area worth living in without us. It's just real estate, tech bros. AI bots, cars. yuck. And like we're the reason people move here, we're the reason, not only that, but we're the reason why people stay.
I want murals everywhere. Mm-hmm. I want artists from local bus, local places in San Francisco to be able to contribute positively to the beauty of their neighborhoods. More housing for artists. Absolutely. Creating, um, there's so much unutilized downtown space. Yeah. I have this dream of like filling all of, you know, the entire area that's just been dilapidated and blown out from COVID. Mm-hmm. Fill it, give, [00:15:00] give artists one month residencies and just let them create in these empty spaces. I heard this quote, um, San Francisco is the place where ideas meet the least amount of friction.
Oh, I love that. And I really like that concept because I think that that's where the beauty of unique art is able to be created. Mm-hmm. Is that there's, there's less friction.
Shawna Vesco Ahern: Maybe loving a place is like loving a person. You don't love it because it's stable. You love it because it makes you feel more alive. The San Francisco art scene is flawed, fickle, sometimes living in its mom's basement, but it's also the reason people move here and the reason they stay. So maybe this isn't a breakup, maybe it's a clearing.
The ashes are still warm. The stage is bare. The lights are waiting. And if we can unc unclench our fists for long enough, our hands might still be free to build something new. So happy Valentine's Day. This is Art. Yap.
Thanks for listening to Art Yap. [00:16:00] If you enjoyed this episode, the best way to support the show is to leave a rating or review. Share art Yap with a dreamer, a maker, a friend. Because good ideas are better when they don't end. For video trailers and sneak peeks, follow us on Instagram at Art yap underscore podcast.
Until next time, keep imagining. Keep creating and keep yapping.