Neighborhood Art Walk, Art on the Castro Theater Screen, Ferry Building Exhibition, and Zine Jam!
This month, I share a conceptual piece about the Maritime Museum, a painting made on a piece of San Francisco history, and a look ahead at my next big project!
Happy Pride Month!
First of all for this month, I would like to say hello to everyone who has joined the newsletter from meeting me at the NOPNA block party/art walk! It was great to meet so many of my neighbors and connect over art and the beauty of San Francisco. In this newsletter I will share a conceptual painting about the Maritime Museum which you’ll be able to see in the Ferry Building, a painting made on a piece of San Francisco history, and a look ahead at my next big project. I finish off the newsletter with a recommendations section and a photo of my cat, Ruby, to reward you for making it to the bottom!
Despite a classic San Francisco summer day of gray skies and chill winds, neighbors and visitors alike came out for the annual NoPa block party and art walk. This was my first year tabling as an artist for the event, and I found myself uplifted and inspired by the support from my local community.
If you’d like more chances to find my work, I have prints and original paintings up at Queer Arts Featured in the Castro, and you can also find my stuff at the Spooky Haus booth at a Pride event near you!
Speaking of Queer Arts Featured, I had the fantastic opportunity this month to work with them on an historic event! They have been given the screen from the Castro Theater as it undergoes renovation, and they invited me to create a work of art with a portion of it.
This piece is currently up for silent auction in support of Queer Arts Featured, which serves as a hub of culture in the Castro, uplifting local queer artists and providing events and community for the city. Bidding closes at midnight on Sunday, June 17!
The first night of this year’s Wet Paint exhibition was a perfect example of what an amazing place Queer AF is. For this show, they have covered the gallery space in the Castro Theater screen as well as frames, canvasses, and furniture, and then they invite the community to come in and create art freely all over the room. I helped set up and kick off the event, and had such an amazing time. I invited my friend Kayleigh Shawn, hands down the best portrait photographer I have ever seen, to attend and photograph the event:
The sense of queer joy and freedom in the room was breathtaking. If you’d like to participate, Wet Paint will be open for communal art making on all the remaining Wednesdays of this month, from 6-8:30pm.
Those of you who have been following my work have probably noticed that most of my paintings are pretty small, but I have broken that mold again with this recent painting about the Maritime Museum.
Maritime Museum Tiles, 20”x16”, acrylic and wax medium on panel
The Maritime Museum is one of my favorite places in the city, and it’s the site of the first big project I worked on when I decided I was going to stay permanently in the city: the 24 hour Moby Dick Marathon. I love the history of the building, how it was made to be a place for the people and had WPA artists making these amazing murals and mosaics. When it was sold off to private interests, the artists walked off the job, leaving the tiling undone. My piece references that by leaving the top corner of the painting unfinished. I feel connected to the WPA artists as a working-class artist myself, and I believe that the city should be full of beautiful, art-filled spaces that are for everyone.
This painting has been accepted as part of Voss Gallery’s upcoming exhibition, Urban Tides. That is exciting enough on its own, but the gallery has also partnered with the Ferry Building, another one of my favorite architectural landmarks. The paintings will be on display there for one night on July 12 for Ferry Building Day, then moved to the gallery for the opening of the exhibition on July 13. The Ferry Building event is ticketed, so make sure to reserve your spot! I hope to see you at those events!
That’s going to be a busy weekend for me, because I am also helping to host and teach Zine Jam, a day long intensive zine making workshop hosted by The Spooky Haus!
Whether you are an experienced zinester, or you are opening another tab right now to search "what is a zine," you will walk away from this workshop with new skills. We will cover the basics of putting together a zine, discuss different methods and approaches, and provide instruction for distributing your zines. Attendees will connect to the larger zine community, and find out about zine happenings around the Bay Area. Mostly, we will make zines!
If you're in need of a little push to get out of your head and just make stuff, this is the event for you. If you've been sitting on an idea for a zine for months or years, this is the event for you. If you're looking to make friends and form community with other queer zinesters, this is the event for you!
My next exciting piece of news is that I have been accepted into the Sanchez Art Center 50|50 show! For this show, participating artists create 50 paintings in 50 days, which are then displayed together in a grid for their big annual fundraising event. By next month’s newsletter I will be in the thick of it, so follow along to see how that adventure goes!
The unfortunate consequence of participating in the 50|50 show is that I have had to put commissions on hold until late August. That being said, if you are interested in a commission for afterwards, please reach out to me and we can get your project settled and in the calendar ahead of time! I will have limited slots for fall and holiday commissions, so you can get in now to guarantee your spot.
Alright, time for recommendations! When I started adding this section I warned that the recommendations might have nothing to do with my art, and this certainly does not. I have been reading the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. It’s a science fiction series about a security bot/human construct who is learning to be its own individual, and the writing is just so entertaining and captivating. Actually, I’ve been listening to it while I work, and Graphic Audio has made excellent audio adaptations of the entire series to date. I got them all for free through my San Francisco Public Library card!
I feel that it would be a disservice not to recommend Crooners. Crooners is a lavender live sing cabaret taking place in my favorite bar in the city, the Blue Room at Stookey’s Club Moderne. Every 4th Sunday of the month hosts Chester Vanderbox and Polly Amber Ross bring in two guest stars to serenade the room with their beautiful voices. There are limited seats, so get your tickets early! It’s an event well worth dressing up for, and you’ll see me there as the door guy!
Photo by Kayleigh Shawn
Thank you for joining me for another month! While you await the next newsletter, you can check out my website to see my portfolio of plein air paintings, still lifes, block prints, figure drawings, tiny scale model houses, murals, and you can also find information on commissions (remember that any commissions will have to wait until August)! Please feel welcome to email me and ask about any ideas you have that aren’t covered on my commission page, I’m always willing to discuss!
Stay tuned for next month, and let me know if there’s something you’d like to hear about in the newsletter in the future.
Lastly, as always, here's Ruby!
Thank you!
-Nathaniel J. Bice
he/him