Art + Water addresses the crisis of affordable artist workspace in San Francisco, fosters the careers of local artists, and creates a dynamic new exhibition space destination and cultural hub that enhances a rich and exciting Embarcadero Waterfront Pathway and re-energizes Downtown San Francisco. This will be accomplished under a Pier 29 sublease with The Community Arts Stabilization Trust (CAST).
Our vision for ART + WATER offers an unprecedented opportunity to activate a dormant part of the waterfront and anchor Downtown San Francisco with a dynamic, groundbreaking, and inclusive space for the arts.
THIS SPACE FEATURES:
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World-class art exhibitions that will bring tens of thousands of visitors to the Embarcadero.
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Much-needed working space for artists.
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Much-needed exhibition space for working artists and other San Francisco visual artists, who have few spaces to show and sell their work.
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A very flexible, convertible space for short-term events.
WHAT IS ART + WATER?
ARTIST RESIDENCIES +
FREE STUDIO SPACE
With our studios, Art + Water hopes to address two problems. One is that studio space in San Francisco is prohibitively high, and this has forced out countless visual artists. Art + Water will provide free studio space to dozens of working artists. And these established artists will together address the second problem: the insanely high cost of art school. At the moment, one year of art school costs $100,000, which is absurd.
So at Art + Water, we’ll provide free space for 20 emerging artists, of all ages, to learn from our 10 established artists. Together, these 30 artists will share their knowledge, and we believe our emerging artists will receive the most rigorous art education in the U.S. All for free. Check out the Art + Water Instagram for updates on on how to apply.
MAJOR ART EXHIBITION SPACE
Art + Water’s exhibition program will take advantage of an expansive 20,000 square foot exhibition space. Its ceiling height, 20 feet and more, and multiple galleries offer potential for immersive experiences and intimate exhibit displays.
The exhibit program will feature artists and makers across a broad spectrum of culture to underline Art + Water’s belief that important creativity exists within and well beyond the confines of the traditional fine arts.
Artists with a mastery of skills and artistic techniques will be highlighted, as well as artists who offer new ways of understanding what art can be. By bringing the widest range of artistic ideas in proximity to an art skills-based school, Art + Water will be a unique space where ideas and technique come together to unlock imagination and powerful artistic possibilities.
OUR INAUGURAL EXHIBITION
FORCED PERSPECTIVE:
THE WORLD OF BOOTS RILEY
In his acclaimed films, writer-director Boots Riley has created a new kind of American surrealism, using practical effects and wildly innovative sets to present a vision of the Bay Area that’s at once recognizable and dystopian, both playful and bizarre. The World of Boots Riley will present sets, props, costumes and production designs from Sorry to Bother You, I’m a Virgo and his upcoming feature, I Love Boosters, allowing visitors to Art + Water to interact with, for example, a 20-foot ball of anxiety.
The exhibit will be fully immersive and accessible, welcoming visitors to learn how Riley, also known as the founder of the seminal hip-hop act The Coup, reinvented himself as one of the world’s most original and uncompromising filmmakers. Public talks and music by Riley and his team will be part of the run of the exhibition.
Maira Kalman is one of the most beloved illustrators and writers in America today. Her colorful and quirky paintings appear in publications, theaters, and galleries throughout the country and abroad. Kalman’s pictures offer a vision of the world unapologetically full of humor, warmth, and charm, qualities increasingly essential in these times.
In collaboration with the artist, Art + Water presents A Wonderful Time: The Work of Maira Kalman, a one-of-a-kind immersive experience that celebrates Kalman’s unique artistry and style.
A WONDERFUL TIME:
THE WORK OF MAIRA KALMAN
EXHIBITIONS IN DEVELOPMENT
FOR KIDS + FAMILIES
EXHIBITIONS IN DEVELOPMENT
CLASSES FOR ALL AGES
Art + Water welcomes art students of all ages and skill levels to Pier 29. We’ll have regular programming and open studio sessions for schools, families, and casual visitors to take fun and unpretentious — and free! — art classes throughout the year.
Heading up this element of our programming will be the great Wendy MacNaughton, the New York Times-bestselling artist, author, and the creator of DrawTogether, the beloved online series of workshops that brings hundreds of thousands of people around the world into one big artmaking experience.
FREE + REDUCED-RENT GALLERY SPACE
FOR LOCAL ARTISTS + ARTS ORGANIZATIONS
Art + Water will feature about 12,000 square feet of gallery space, open on the south side of Pier 29. This gallery space will be rentable to local arts organizations — from small galleries who have been priced out of the city, to nonprofits like our friends at Creativity Explored. Partner organizations like the Minnesota Street Project will be able to program gallery space with us, and artists can reserve space for individual shows and installations.
Because the gallery area will use moveable walls — much like at the art fairs at Fort Mason — visitors will experience a different array of local artists every time they come to Pier 29. To learn more about this aspect of Art + Water, please email Sherry Knutson at sherry@artpluswater.org. We want this to be a radically welcoming space where San Francisco’s visual artists can always find a home to show their work to the world.
FLOORPLAN
Rendering by WRNS STUDIO
Heather Holt
Heather Holt is an Associate Director with ODC, a groundbreaking contemporary arts institution, which delivers its mission through a world class dance company, an innovative presenting theater and digital platform, and a dance school for movers of all ages and abilities. For decades, Holt has served as a passionate advocate for arts and artists in San Francisco, Bay Area, with deep experience in non-profit management, curating, fundraising, events and hospitality.
Jane Ganahl
Jane Ganahl is a Bay Area journalist, author, event producer, teacher, and animal activist. In 1999, she co-founded the Litquake literary festival, now the West Coast's largest, with Jack Boulware. During nearly four decades with Hearst newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle, she penned the popular Single Minded column. She authored the memoir Naked on the Page and edited the anthology Single Woman of a Certain Age.
Stephanie Fine Sasse
Stephanie Fine Sasse combines neuroscience, education, and design. With a Harvard background in neuroscience and psychology, she developed I Am a Scientist, reaching over a million students. She co-authored Science Not Silence (MIT Press) and organized the March for Science, mobilizing over a million worldwide. At The Plenary, Co., she builds immersive exhibitions and interactive salons integrating science, art, and community to inspire civic engagement.
Rob Saunders
Rob Saunders, a letter arts collector for over 40 years, founded The Letterform Archive to share his private collection with the public. Since opening in February 2015, the Archive offers hands-on access to a curated collection of over 100,000 items spanning lettering, typography, calligraphy, and graphic design across thousands of years of history. It has since welcomed over 20,000 guests from more than 30 countries.
Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Ingrid Rojas Contreras was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. Her memoir, The Man Who Could Move Clouds, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and National Book Critics Circle Award. Her debut novel, Fruit of the Drunken Tree, won the California Book Award silver medal in First Fiction. She is a Visiting Writer at Saint Mary's College and lives in California.
Bridget Quinn
Bridget Quinn is author of She Votes: How U.S. Women Won Suffrage, and What Happened Next (Amazon Best History 2020) and award-winning Broad Strokes: 15 Women Who Made Art and Made History (Amazon Best Art 2017, translated into four languages). NPR praised its "spunky attitudinal, SMART writing." Her current book is Portrait of a Woman: Art, Rivalry & Revolution in the Life of Adélaïde Labille-Guiard.
Rebecca Solnit
Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than twenty books on feminism, western and urban history, social change, hope, and catastrophe. Her acclaimed works include Men Explain Things to Me, Hope in the Dark, Orwell's Roses, and A Paradise Built in Hell. A product of California public education, she writes regularly for The Guardian, serves on the board of Oil Change International, and launched the climate project Not Too Late (nottoolateclimate.com).
Claudia Schmuckli
Claudia Schmuckli is Chief Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. She has curated over 20 exhibitions and installations, including Lee Mingwei: Rituals of Care (2024), Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence (2023), Judy Chicago: A Retrospective (2021), and Uncanny Valley: Being Human in the Age of AI (2020). She also curated Isaac Julien: I Dream a World, the artist's first US retrospective.
Meg Shiffler
Meg Shiffler is a Bay Area–based curator, writer, and arts leader. In 2025, she launched Cities of Glass, a ten-year independent curatorial initiative commissioning site-specific works worldwide. She is the inaugural Director of Artist Space Trust, the nation’s first Community Land Trust for artists. She has worked for the SF Arts Commission (SF), New Museum and Andrea Rosen Gallery (NYC) and co-founded Consolidated Works (Seattle).
Amanda Uhle
Amanda Uhle is Executive Director and Publisher of McSweeney's, The Believer, and Illustoria, an art and storytelling magazine for young readers. She co-founded The International Congress of Youth Voices with Dave Eggers and co-edits the I, Witness series. Previously, Uhle was executive director of 826michigan for over 11 years. Her writing appears in The Washington Post, Politico, and Newsweek. Her memoir, Destroy This House, is published by Simon & Schuster.
Kal Spelletich
For 25 years, Kal Spelletich has explored the human-machine interface, using technology to reconnect people with intense, real-life experiences. His interactive work requires participants to operate often dangerous machinery, probing boundaries between fear, control, and exhilaration. His work has been exhibited at San Francisco's De Young Museum, SFMOMA, Exploratorium, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, plus internationally. He is represented by Catharine Clark Gallery.
Tabitha Soren
After a career as a reporter, Soren studied art and photography at Stanford University. Her work has been published in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and various other magazines and journals. Soren’s work has been exhibited worldwide, and is in the permanent collections of the Getty Museum, Los Angeles, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, and many more. She is the author of the books Surface Tension (RVB Books, Paris, 2021) and Fantasy Life (Aperture, 2017).
Ben Venom
Ben Venom holds an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute (2007). His work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the Levi Strauss Museum (Germany), the National Folk Museum of Korea, and the Taubman Museum of Art. He has been featured by NPR, CBS Sunday Morning, and Playboy. Recent residencies include MASS MoCA and the de Young Museum, and he is Studio Manager of The Space Program SF.
ART + WATER TEAM
CO-FOUNDER &
CO-EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
JD Beltran
A native San Franciscan who grew up in the Richmond District, JD Beltran has been a creative infrastruralist and arts cheerleader who, for more than 20 years, has advanced groundbreaking solutions and organizational initiatives that address cultural, social, environmental, and economic challenges. She has served on the San Francisco Arts Commission for 16 years, serving as President for 8 them. An award-winning artist with works in museums and collections worldwide, filmmaker, designer, writer, journalist, educator, and master in the use of the serial comma, Beltran has served as a longtime faculty in art, film, design, and technology at the San Francisco Art Institute (her alma mater), CCA, SFSU, and Stanford.
CHIEF CURATOR &
CONSULTING CO-EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
René de Guzman
René de Guzman is a longtime Bay Area curator, artist, and arts consultant. He was one of the founding curators at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts as Visual Arts Curator and Director of Visual Arts, serving from 1993-2007, and subsequently served as the Senior Curator of Art and Director of Exhibition Strategy at the Oakland Museum of California from 2007 - 2021, He also served as Deputy Director for Programs and Engagement at Headlands Center for the Arts, overseeing artist residencies and public programs. For over three decades, he has developed innovative and popular exhibitions for a wide public.
CO-FOUNDER
Dave Eggers
In 2002, author Nínive Calegari and artist Dave Eggers cofounded 826 Valencia, the beloved Mission District writing and tutoring center. Celebrating its twenty-third year in San Francisco, the center now has locations all over the city, with major hubs in the Mission, the Tenderloin, and Mission Bay. Eggers has also jump-started many other nonprofits, including ScholarMatch, dedicated to making college accessible to low-income students, and Voice of Witness, a series of books that illuminate human rights crises through oral history. He is also the founder of McSweeney's, the Mission-based publishing company. His drawings and paintings have been widely show and are represented by Electric Works.
HEAD OF OPERATIONS
Gabriel Penfield
Gabriel Penfield served as the Lab Manager fabricator for Sculpture, Ceramics, and Art and Technology at the San Francisco Art Institute from 2007-2020, and is the Founder and Lead Designer at Penfield Design Group. He has spearheaded installations for major exhibitions and managed capital improvement initiatives, and has two decades of experience in building and studio management, specializing in educational environments, art, and residential projects. His creative practice focuses on small run production tableware, specializing in formulating, creating, and testing all of the glazes and clays that are used in his production.
HEAD OF DEVELOPMENT
Rebecca Teague
Rebecca Teague was born in Washington, DC, raised in Chicago, and has called the Bay Area home for nearly 30 years. An artist trained at the San Francisco Art Institute and the Academy of Art University, she brings that perspective to her career as a nonprofit development leader. With over 15 years of experience in fundraising, donor engagement, and program planning, Rebecca has championed artists and organizations that make the Bay Area’s cultural community so vital. Her dual perspective as artist and advocate makes development work deeply meaningful, and fuels her commitment to supporting artists and strengthening the entire arts ecosystem.
HEAD OF STUDIOS
Sherry Knutson
Sherry Knutson is a Northern California multidisciplinary artist and educator with over 20 years of experience in painting, embroidery, and textile design. At San Francisco Art Institute, she served as Director of BFA Studios, developed the International Summer Residency Program, and contributed to institutional growth through exhibition curation and committee leadership. In 2020, she founded More Love, Love More, an initiative combining art with social consciousness using recycled materials and hand-embroidered designs. Her humanitarian-focused practice emphasizes community building, environmental awareness, and fostering dialogue through creative expression and collaborative engagement.
HEAD OF FACULTY
Ana Teresa Fernández
Ana Teresa Fernández creates "Magical Non-fiction" through performance, video, photography, painting, and sculpture. Born in Tampico, Mexico, and based in San Francisco, she explores borders, identity, and climate through time-based actions and social gestures. Her work includes erasing the Tijuana-San Diego border by painting it sky blue while wearing a tango dress. Featured at major venues including the 2022 Armory Show, her work is held in collections at institutions like the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Denver Art Museum, and Blanton Museum of Art.
CREATIVE DIRECTOR
Jennifer Morla
Jennifer Morla founded Morla Design in 1984, creating witty and elegant work spanning motion graphics, branding, retail environments, and textiles. She has received graphic design's highest honors: the AIGA Medal and Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Award. Her work appears in major museum collections including MOMA, LACMA, and the Smithsonian, with SFMOMA acquiring over 50 pieces. Notable clients include Levi Strauss, MTV, Apple, and Stanford University. She lectures internationally and taught senior level design at California College of the Arts for over 20 years.
HEAD OF OPEN EDUCATION
Wendy MacNaughton
Wendy MacNaughton is an artist, graphic journalist, and educator who believes drawing creates human connection. She's author-illustrator of How to Say Goodbye and Meanwhile in San Francisco, and collaborated on bestsellers like Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. As a visual columnist, she traveled America chronicling overlooked stories. MacNaughton created DrawTogether, a pandemic-born drawing series now serving 300,000+ learners globally. Also trained as a social worker, her guerrilla art project DrawTogether Strangers encourages random passersby to draw each other's portraits, demonstrating her core belief that genuine connection sparks through truly seeing one another.
HEAD OF WEB DESIGN
Andy Shimmin
Andy is a designer and creative specializing in alternative, novel, and experimental interfaces. His work has been shown at the Denver Art Museum and Carnegie Hall. He's previously been part of Ford Motor Company's design team for autonomous vehicle interfaces and driver experiences, the Webex collaboration team at Cisco, and held various roles at startups around San Francisco. Andy’s design process is driven by playfulness, craftsmanship, and a sense of wonder, qualities that he strives to embody in both his work and himself. When he's not designing, he creates sculptural and functional ceramic works, often gifting them to friends who didn't ask for them.
JACKS OF ALL TRADES
Jacksaline Perez
Jacksaline [aka "Jacks"] is a creative healer whose work lives at the intersection of memory, emotion, and transformation. Moving between writing, photography, and painting, she gathers fragments of feeling and experience, shaping them into vessels of expression and restoration. A recent SFSU graduate and Guardian Scholars Program ambassador, she carries a deep awareness of the power of voice—especially when it rises from silence. Her art is an offering: a soft rebellion, a mirror, a place to land. She moves with intention—led by intuition, shaped by resilience, and grounded in the belief that beauty is a form of resistance and healing.
SCENOGRAPHER
Kristin Farr
Kristin Farr is an artist and has served as a curator, journalist and producer for KQED, Juxtapoz Magazine and Facebook’s original artist-in-residence program. She has created public art installations locally and internationally, and founded the Emmy-winning educational film series, KQED Art School. Her work is directed by color psychology and folk-art practices. She is intuitively connected to color due to her lifelong experience with synesthesia. Kristin has painted large-scale murals internationally and locally since 2014, and has made objects of all forms since childhood, mostly focused on painting, sculpture, and video art.
ART + WATER FACULTY
Meet the first cohort of artists who will fill Pier 29 with color.
Ana Teresa Fernández. JD Beltran. Taraneh Hemani. Paul Madonna. Jet Martinez. Travis Somerville. David Wilson. Jenifer Wofford. George McCalman.
These nine visual artists will be given free studio space through Art + Water, in exchange for mentoring 20 emerging artists.
These emerging artists will be chosen from an application process open to all San Francisco residents of all ages.
We are thrilled to have assembled this astonishing array of some of the Bay Area’s best visual minds...
Ana Teresa Fernández
Ana Teresa Fernández, who speaks five languages, creates "Magical Non-fiction"—transforming unimaginable realities into dreamscapes of possibility. Born in Tampico, Mexico, and based in San Francisco, she uses performance, video, photography, painting, and sculpture to explore borders, identity, and climate through time-based actions and social gestures.Her border erasure work includes painting portions of the Tijuana-San Diego wall sky blue while wearing a tango dress, creating the illusion of openings. Major projects include On The Horizon for the 2021 Lands End exhibition. Featured as a solo booth at the 2022 Armory Show, her work resides in prestigious collections including the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Denver Art Museum, and Blanton Museum of Art, among others.
JD Beltran
JD Beltran is an award-winning artist and filmmaker whose work has been exhibited internationally including at the Walker Art Center, San Francisco MOMA, Ars Electronica, The Getty Institute, and the MIT Media Lab. Her art + technology work has earned recognition as one of the top Public Artworks in the U.S. by Public Art Network, and one of the top art + technology artworks in the world by the NTAA. She also has won a CES Innovation Award, and been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, and Wired and her pieces are held in museums and private collections worldwide. She's received grants from Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation, Artadia, and Skowegan. A longtime educator at the San Francisco Art Institute, Stanford, SFSU, and other institutions, Beltran has served on the San Francisco Arts Commission since 2009. Mayor London Breed declared December 3, 2018 "JD Beltran Day in San Francisco."
Jet Martinez
Oakland-based artist Jet Martinez creates vibrant public art that blends Mexican folk traditions with contemporary aesthetics. Born in Tuxpan, Veracruz and raised in Cuernavaca, he draws inspiration from pottery, weaving, and embroidery to enliven urban architecture with ornate patterns. A San Francisco Art Institute BFA graduate, Martinez directed the Clarion Alley Mural Project for nearly a decade. His work has been exhibited at institutions including MACLA and SomArts, with murals commissioned by Facebook, Red Bull, and SF General Hospital. He lives in Oakland with his wife and two children.
Taraneh Hemani
Raised in Tehran and based in the Bay Area for over 40 years, Taraneh Hemami explores displacement, preservation and representation through public and curatorial projects. Her works incorporate historical materials, organizing images and data into patterns and maps as installations, public art, and publications. Hemami's numerous awards include a Creative Capital grant and San Francisco Arts Commission Artist Award. Her works have been exhibited internationally at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Pergamon Museum, and Sharjah Art Museum, and are in the Victoria and Albert Museum and British Museum collections. She is Associate Professor at California College of the Arts and founder of the Makaan Residency.
Travis Somerville
Born in Atlanta and raised in the American South, Travis Somerville studied at Maryland Institute College of Art before settling in San Francisco, where he attended the San Francisco Art Institute. His large-scale oil paintings on paper incorporate collage elements and feature political and cultural icons from Southern history. Somerville's work examines the complexities of racism and provides a foundation for discussing American oppression and colonial attitudes globally. His art has been exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Walker Art Center, and Birmingham Museum of Art. His work is in the collections of the SFMOMA and the de Young Museum.
Paul Madonna
Paul Madonna is an award-winning artist and best-selling author whose unique blend of drawing and storytelling has been called an "all new art form." Creator of the San Francisco Chronicle series All Over Coffee (12 years) and author of seven books including the Emit Hopper Mystery Series, his work has earned multiple honors including the 2011 NCBA Award. His art spans novels, cartoons, and public murals, appearing internationally in galleries, museums, and publications. A Carnegie Mellon BFA graduate and MAD Magazine's first art intern, he co-founded therumpus.net and teaches creative practice.
David Wilson
David Wilson is an Oakland-based artist who creates observational drawings from direct landscape experiences and orchestrates site-based gatherings that bring together a wide range of artists, performers, filmmakers, chefs, and artisans into collaborative relationships. He organized the experimental exhibition The Possible at BAMPFA and received SFMOMA's 2012 SECA Art Award. His work has been exhibited at the SFMOMA and the 2010 CA Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, and he had a solo MATRIX exhibition at the BAMPFA. He was the inaugural artist in residence at 500 Capp St and has received grants from the Andy Warhol Foundation and the Svane Family Foundation.
Jenifer Wofford
Jenifer K Wofford is a San Francisco artist and educator whose work explores hybridity, history, and calamity. She is one-third of the Filipina-American artist trio MOB. Wofford has exhibited at the SFMOMA, Asian Art Museum, YBCA, and Silverlens Galleries. A 2025 Artadia Awardee and 2017 Joan Mitchell Foundation grant recipient, she has earned recognition through the YBCA 100 list, a Eureka Fellowship, and grants from Art Matters and the SFAC. Wofford teaches at the University of San Francisco. Born in San Francisco and raised internationally, she holds degrees from SFAI (BFA) and UC Berkeley (MFA). She's currently developing three major California public art commissions.
George McCalman
George McCalman is an artist, author, and creative director based in San Francisco and founder of the creative agency McCalman.Co. With a background in editorial storytelling and fine art, his work bridges design, narrative, and visual art. His Observed and First Person columns for the San Francisco Chronicle document Bay Area culture. His book Illustrated Black History: Honoring the Iconic and Unseen (Sept 2022) received acclaim and won the 2023 NAACP Award for Outstanding Literary Work. He recently received the James Beard Award for the MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award 2025.
VISITING ARTISTS + CURATORS
We’ve assembled what we think is a truly stunning list of visiting artists and curators, all of whom believe in our model and have agreed to visit Art + Water in our first two years of programming.
These visiting artists and curators might come for an hour to share their expertise with our emerging artists. They might teach, then give a public talk. They might hold a large-scale public demonstration open to all.
Or all of the above—always with an eye toward welcoming the public to know more about how art is made and comes to life. Check the Art + Water Instagram for updates to our visiting artists and curators programming.
Tanya Zimbardo
Tanya Zimbardo is San Francisco-based curator and writer. Over the past decade, she has organized exhibitions and screenings for a range of Bay Area nonprofit organizations including di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, Mills College Art Museum, San Francisco Cinematheque, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Lena Wolff
Lena Wolff is a San Francisco Bay Area artist, craftswoman, and democracy activist whose work spans folk art, minimalism, and political expression through drawing, sculpture, and public projects. She founded Art for Democracy in 2017, creating national voter participation campaigns. Her work is collected by major institutions including the SFMOMA and the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.
Griff Williams
Griff Williams is an American painter, publisher, art instructor, filmmaker, and gallerist who owns Gallery 16. His paintings have been exhibited worldwide at major museums including San Diego Museum of Art, Orange County Museum of Art, and San Jose Museum of Art, with reviews in Art in America and Frieze.
Chris Ware
Chris Ware is a writer, artist, and author of the books Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, Building Stories, and Rusty Brown. His work has been exhibited at the Hammer Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 2021, Ware received the Grand Prix de la Ville d’Angoulême and a solo retrospective of his work was presented at the Centre Pompidou in 2022.
Catherine Wagner
Catherine Wagner is a conceptual artist working in sculpture, installation and photographer who has received the Rome Prize, the Guggenheim Fellowship, NEA Fellowships, and the Ferguson Award. Time Magazine named her one of the Fine Arts Innovators of the Year, and her work is in the collections of the MOMA, the Whitney Museum, the LACMA, and the SFMOMA. She is Emeritus Professor of Studio Art at Mills College at Northeastern University.
Sarah Vowell
Sarah Vowell is the author of seven nonfiction books, including Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, Unfamiliar Fishes, The Wordy Shipmates, and Assassination Vacation. She was a contributing editor for This American Life from 1996 to 2008 and has worked for The New York Times, Salon, Time, Spin, and GQ.
Isaac Vasquez Avila
Isaac Vazquez Avila, born in Mexico City, is a San Francisco-based painter and sculptor. He holds a BA in Latino/a Studies from SFSU and an MFA from UC Berkeley (2016). Avila runs Avila Mio Studio, creating murals and custom installations. His work has been exhibited at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Guerrero Gallery, and other venues.
Adrian Tomine
Adrian Tomine is a bestselling author, screenwriter, and New Yorker cover artist. His award-winning graphic novels include Summer Blonde, Shortcomings and Killing and Dying, which was named one of NPR’s Best Books of the Year. In 2023, Shortcomings was adapted to film by director Randall Park, from a screenplay by Tomine. His short stories were also adapted into the 2021 French film Paris, 13th District.
Sunra Thompson
Sunra Thompson is a designer and the art director of the McSweeney’s Quarterly. Under his helm, the McSweeney's Quarterly has been a finalist for multiple National Magazine Awards in Design, as well as for the Best Illustrated Cover. He lives in Berkeley, California.
Steve Thompson
Steve Thompson, raised in rural Southern California, has worked in fabrication since age 8, learning welding and metalwork from his grandfather. After studying physics and philosophy at UC Irvine, he designed dwellings on a West Marin farm and founded Stochastic Labs' fabrication shop. He has worked with numerous artists, designers, and institutions to realize meaningful concepts. He built and now runs Peak Design's prototyping lab.
Chinzalée Sonami
Chinzalée Sonami runs PALA, a ceramics practice based in her hometown of Oakland. Named "PALA" (Tibetan for "father") after her late Tibetan potter father, she views her work as a time wormhole where father and daughter occupy the same creative space through clay, continuing his artistic legacy.
Jessica Silverman
Jessica Silverman founded her internationally renowned contemporary art gallery in 2008. With an MA in Curatorial Practice from the California College of the Arts, she has a history of building artist careers and curating renowned private collections. Her gallery artists' works have been acquired by major museums, including the MoMA, the Tate, and the SFMOMA.
David Shrigley
British artist David Shrigley is known for distinctive drawings and satirical commentary on everyday life. His deadpan humor captures overheard conversations and compulsive observations. Working across sculpture, installation, animation, and music, he seeks wider audiences beyond galleries through publications and collaborations.
Frank Smigiel
Frank Smigiel is a visual arts curator, educator, and writer serving as Director of Arts Programming & Partnerships at the Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture in San Francisco. Formerly an Associate Curator at the SFMOMA, he has collaborated with diverse artists and focuses on theater/time-based art intersections, artist commerce, and queer histories.
Dr. Scott D. Sampson
Scott D. Sampson is a Canadian-American paleontologist and science communicator, and the Executive Director of the California Academy of Sciences. Previously Vice President of Research & Collections and Chief Curator at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, he's also known for hosting the PBS Kids show Dinosaur Train.
Ted Russell
Ted Russell led arts strategy at the Kenneth Rainin Foundation and served as a Senior Program Officer at the James Irvine Foundation (2005-16). He holds a BA from Yale and an MBA from UCLA Anderson. He's a Nasher Haemisegger Fellow at SMU DataArts and served as board chair of Grantmakers in the Arts (2020-21).
Leah Rosenberg
Leah Rosenberg works across artistic media to spark new experiences of color. Using painting, installation, printmaking, sculpture, performance, and video she invites viewers to consider how color can be perceived both multi-sensorially and multi-dimensionally. By creating such enriched encounters, her work strives to deepen our understanding of the emotional and psychological impact of color in everyday life.
Kim Stanley Robinson
Kim Stanley Robinson is an acclaimed American science fiction author, best known for his Mars Trilogy. A multiple award winner—including Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards—The New Yorker recognizes him as "one of the greatest living science-fiction writers." His work has profoundly shaped contemporary science fiction literature.
Larry Rinder
Lawrence Rinder directed the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive from 2008-2020. Previously, he was Founding Director of the Wattis Institute, Dean at the California College of the Arts, and Curator of Contemporary Art at the Whitney Museum. He also writes art criticism, poetry, drama, and fiction.
Boots Riley
Boots Riley is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, rapper, and communist activist. He is the lead vocalist of The Coup and Street Sweeper Social Club. He made his feature-film directorial debut with Sorry to Bother You, which he also wrote. In 2023, the television show I'm a Virgo premiered, which he wrote and directed. Riley is teaming with NEON for I Love Boosters, his latest film, which will star Keke Palmer and Demi Moore.
Rigo 23
Rigo 23 is a Portuguese-born visual artist and sculptor. He is known in the San Francisco community for having painted a number of large, graphic "sign" murals including: One Tree next to the U.S. Route 101 on-ramp at 10th and Bryant Street, Innercity Home on a large public housing structure, Sky/Ground on a tall abandoned building at 3rd and Mission Street, and Extinct over a Shell gas station. Rigo earned his BFA degree from the San Francisco Art Institute, and an MFA degree from Stanford University.
Renny Pritikin
Renny Pritikin is a San Francisco Bay Area curator, art writer, and poet. He has served as Chief Curator at New Langton Arts, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, The Nelson Gallery at UC Davis, and the Contemporary Jewish Museum. Pritikin has authored five poetry books and a memoir.
Nicholas Price
Nicholas Price works as the Master Printer at Magnolia Editions in Oakland, California. An alum of the San Francisco Art Institute, he also served as a Studio Artist at Root Division (2012-2014) before returning in 2016 to pilot Root Division's Alumni Studio Artist Program.
Woody De Othello
Woody De Othello, based in Oakland, California, transforms everyday objects—clocks, phones, fans—into clay and bronze vessels of psychic significance, drawing from African nkisi traditions. His sculptures and two-dimensional works create surrealistic distortions of scale and time, making the familiar uncanny and illegible. He is represented by Jessica Silverman Gallery.
Christo Oropeza
San Francisco native Christo Oropeza is a "cultural worker" encompassing roles as artist, curator, gallerist, producer, and museum staffer. Recent projects include murals at the SFMOMA, Facebook's Artist in Residence program, and multiple gallery exhibitions. He co-founded Incline Gallery, was named to the YBCA 100, and established the San Pancho Art Collective.
yétúndé ọlágbajú
yétúndé ọlágbajú is a Nigerian/Gullah-Geeche research-based artist, creative producer, and cultural strategist based in California. Their work explores the question: "What must we reckon with as we build a future, together?" Through sonic, sculptural, and collaborative practices, ọlágbajú examines interdependence and transformation within Black diaspora experiences, untangling possibilities emerging from collective reckonings.
Ellen Oh
Ellen Oh is a creative producer and arts administrator with 25 years of experience across diverse organizations, and is the Director of Interdisciplinary Arts Program at Stanford University. She catalyzes programs, curates teams, and demonstrates the arts' transformative impact. Ellen serves on the advisory boards of Root Division and the Headlands Center for the Arts while raising two creative daughters.
Robyn O’Neil
Robyn O'Neil is a Washington State-based artist whose work has appeared in over fifty museums worldwide and the 2004 Whitney Biennial. She has been awarded grants from the Joan Mitchell Foundation and Artadia, created the award-winning film WE, THE MASSES, hosts the podcast ME READING STUFF. She is represented by Susan Inglett Gallery, Inman Gallery, and Western Exhibitions.
Deborah Munk
As Manager of Sustainability Education Programs at Recology, Deborah Munk has supported Bay Area artists for 25 years through the Artist in Residence and Educational Tour Programs. She has expanded the AIR Program across the western region and developed educational tours engaging thousands annually, fostering creativity and conservation.
Jennifer Morla
Jennifer Morla founded Morla Design in 1984, creating acclaimed branding, retail environments, and motion graphics. She has been awarded graphic design's highest honors: the AIGA Medal and the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Award. Her work appears in the permanent collections of the MOMA, the LACMA, and the Smithsonian, with the SFMOMA acquiring over 50 pieces for its permanent collection.
Jonathan Carver Moore
Jonathan Carver Moore is San Francisco's only openly gay Black male-owned contemporary art gallery, specializing in emerging and established BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and women artists. Committed to amplifying underrepresented voices through a Black queer lens, the gallery champions community accessibility, welcoming novice and avid collectors alike while celebrating diversity throughout the art world.
Susan Miller
Susan Miller is a seasoned arts and academic professional who has developed four interdisciplinary campus research groups at UC Berkeley since 2008, including the Berkeley Center for New Media. Previously executive director of San Francisco's New Langton Arts, she specializes in video, media arts, and Bay Area creative practice, curating exhibitions internationally.
Barry McGee
Barry McGee, a San Francisco Art Institute graduate, emerged from the Mission School movement and street art culture as "Twist." His work addresses social issues through various personas, featuring his signature droopy-eyed male figure representing empathy for the homeless. Using geometric patterns, found objects, and the "cluster method," McGee creates art examining public versus private space while advocating for marginalized communities.
Jill Manton
Jill Manton is a nationally recognized public art leader with entrepreneurial skills and renowned curatorial expertise. A former San Francisco Arts Commission Director of Programs and Public Art, Manton authored the $50 million Treasure Island Arts Master Plan and established the San Francisco Public Art Trust. She has raised over $72.5M for art initiatives and received the Rockefeller Foundation Grant.
Michelle Mansour
Michelle Mansour is an Egyptian-American artist, educator, and curator based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has been exhibited at venues including The de Young Museum and the SFMOMA Artists Gallery. She holds an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and has participated in residencies at the Djerassi Resident Artist Program and internationally.
Amy Kurzwell
Amy Kurzweil is a cartoonist and the author of two graphic memoirs: Flying Couch and Artificial: A Love Story, which was named a Best Book of 2023 by NPR, The New Yorker, and Kirkus. Her writing, comics and cartoons have also been published in The Verge, The New York Times Book Review, The Believer, and many other publications. Artificial: A Love Story, follows the life of her father and her grandfather, another survivor of the Holocaust.
Amy Kisch
Amy Kisch is a social impact strategist and curator who founded Art+Action, Collect For Change™, and AKArt Advisory. She leverages art to inspire action and deepen public discussions around collective responsibility. A 2020 YBCA 100 Honoree with an Masters in Social Work, she previously ran Sotheby's global VIP program and holds a BA from Columbia University.
Asha Kilgallen McGee
Asha Kilgallen McGee is a curator and communications coordinator based in the North Bay. She earned her BA in Art History from UC Santa Barbara in 2023, exploring how contemporary art holds memory, builds community, and speaks across disciplines. Inspired by her Bay Area roots, she collaborates with emerging and established artists.
Em Kettner
Em Kettner is a Richmond, CA-based artist and writer. Recent solo shows include exhibitions at François Ghebaly Gallery, Chapter NY, and HARPY. Her work appears in major collections including the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and has been featured in Artforum, Art in America, and Paris Review. She's represented by François Ghebaly Gallery.
Maira Kalman
Maira Kalman has written and illustrated over 30 books for adults and children. She has been a frequent contributor to The New York Times and The New Yorker, and has created textiles for Isaac Mizrahi and Kate Spade and sets for Mark Morris. Her art has been exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide, and she is represented by Mary Ryan Gallery.
Spike Jonze
Spike Jonze is the versatile filmmaker behind the acclaimed films Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Where the Wild Things Are. He won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Her, which he also directed. As a producer, his credits include Michel Gondry’s Human Nature and Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York. He is also one of the creators and producers of the Jackass TV show and films, and is a member of the Advisory Board of 826LA.
PJ Johnston
PJ Johnston is the former Executive Director of the San Francisco Film Commission and was president of the San Francisco Arts Commission for nine years. He has served on boards of various nonprofit organizations focused on arts and advocacy for women and African Americans, and is currently a board member of the African American Arts & Culture Complex.
Chris Johanson
Chris Johanson is a Los Angeles and Portland-based artist and key figure in San Francisco's Mission School post-punk movement. His diverse practice encompasses painting, drawing, sculpture, design, and music, exploring spirituality, sociology, and environmental themes through conceptually open works that encourage contemplation of everyday life experiences.
Maria Jenson
Maria Jenson is Creative and Executive Director of SOMArts, advancing innovative strategies to sustain creative communities. She has deepened the organization's commitment to racial equity through groundbreaking exhibitions and expanded public programs. A Getty Foundation Executive Leadership Institute graduate, she previously worked at SFMOMA and founded ArtPadSF.
Annice Jacoby
Annice Jacoby is recognized for innovative work in public art, literature, and visual arts. Highlights include Street Art San Francisco: Mission Muralismo (Abrams), Cultural Encounters for the de Young Museum, and City of Poets for the San Francisco Public Library. Her work expands art in public life, employing poetry, theater, and media to examine critical issues.
Johanna Jackson
Johanna Jackson is a multidisciplinary artist creating sculptural and functional objects like vessels and household items that transcend utility to become profound art. Recent exhibitions include Gallery 12.26, Dallas, and Tennis Elbow, New York. She collaborates with Chris Johanson on furniture and lives between Portland and Topanga Canyon.
Valerie Imus
Valerie Imus is a curator, writer, and artist with an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The Co-Director and Artistic Director at Southern Exposure since 2011, she has curated numerous projects including Over the Wall and New New Games. She collaborates with The Citizens Laboratory and OPENrestaurant.
Candace Huey
Candace Huey is an interdisciplinary curator and art historian who founded re.riddle, an experimental contemporary art gallery. She has worked for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Bonhams auction house, and various Bay Area galleries. With degrees from The Courtauld and UC Berkeley, she serves on the SECA Council at SFMOMA and the Northern California ArtTable Leadership Committee.
Liz Hickok
San Francisco artist Liz Hickok creates immersive artworks blending low and high technology through photography, sculpture, video, and installation. Using playful materials, she intermingles science and nature in whimsical spaces. Her recent projects incorporate augmented reality and interactive technologies, fostering personal connections and bridging the gap between artist and viewer.
Jonn Herschend
Jonn Herschend is an interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and experimental publisher raised in a midwestern amusement park. His work explores fiction, reality, and narrative structures explaining everyday chaos. He's exhibited at the Whitney Museum, Telluride Film Festival, and SFMOMA, co-founded THE THING Quarterly, and is a Fleishhacker Eureka Fellow and recipient of the SFMOMA SECA Award.
Liz Hernández
Liz Hernández creates art through painting, sculpture, and textiles, blending storytelling with material experimentation. She reinterprets Mexican craft traditions like embroidery and repujado into her own visual language. Her work has been exhibited worldwide, at venues in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and Mexico City. Her work is in the permanent collections of the SFMOMA, the de Young Museum, and KADIST.
Paul Henderson
Paul Henderson is a fourth-generation San Franciscan art curator, collector, and cultural strategist from Bayview-Hunter's Point. He serves on boards of the California African American Museum and ArtLikeMe, advancing equity-focused cultural initiatives. His Henderson Art Collection intentionally introduces audiences to emerging artists while challenging cultural stereotypes and expanding arts representation.
Shawn Harris
Shawn Harris is an award-winning author and illustrator. His debut, Have You Ever Seen A Flower, received a Caldecott Honor. He illustrated the Newbery Medal-winning The Eyes and the Impossible and won the Bull-Bransom Award for A Polar Bear in the Snow.
Maria Guzmán Capron
Maria A. Guzmán Capron creates vibrant textile works exploring cultural hybridity and non-binary identity. Born in Milan to Colombian-Peruvian parents, later moving to Texas, the artist examines assimilation and visibility through multilayered fabric constructions. Their practice manifests the competing cultural influences that shape us, highlighting our multiple, sometimes conflicting identities.
Joyce Grimm
Joyce Grimm was Chief Curator at Adobe's Festival of the Impossible and Founder of Triple Base Gallery. She annually reinvents interactive exhibitions by showcasing thought-provoking artworks with cutting-edge technology, including virtual and augmented reality experiences and sensory-enhancing art installations that push the boundaries of traditional gallery experiences.
Andrew Sean Greer
Andrew Sean Greer is an American novelist and short story writer who received the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel Less. Author of six works of fiction including The Story of a Marriage and The Confessions of Max Tivoli, he has taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and been an NEA Fellow and National Book Award judge.
Ted Gioia
Ted Gioia is a San Francisco-based writer and arts leader serving as Program & Development Director at Arion Press. His essays have appeared in The New Republic, New York Magazine, and VQR. His debut fiction will be published by First Bite Press in 2025, and he's currently writing a novel.
Rudolf Frieling
Rudolf Frieling, the SFMOMA's Emeritus Curator of Media Arts (2006-2025) organized major exhibitions including The Art of Participation (2008), Bruce Conner: It's All True (2016), the retrospective Nam June Paik (2021), and What Matters (2023-2024). He has served as faculty at the California College of the Arts and the San Francisco Art Institute.
Tammy Fortin
Tammy Fortin is a writer and musician who has worked at four art museums, incorporating visual culture into her writing. She established a writing residency at the Broad Art Museum in 2012 and has written for various publications. She recently finished a novel and plays guitar in the band Excuses for Skipping.
Kristin Farr
Kristin Farr is an artist and has served as a curator, journalist and producer for KQED, Juxtapoz Magazine and Facebook’s original artist-in-residence program. She has created public art installations locally and internationally, and founded the Emmy-winning educational film series, KQED Art School.
Marcel Dzama
Drawing from folk vernacular and art-historical influences, Marcel Dzama's work visualizes childhood fantasies and otherworldly fairy tales. His works are held in major collections including the MoMA, the Guggenheim, the Centre Pompidou, and the Tate. Since 1998, Dzama has been represented by David Zwirner, exhibiting widely internationally.
Christine Duval
Christine Duval is a visionary art curator with over 20 years of experience creating groundbreaking contemporary exhibitions. Specializing in multimedia and digital works, she has organized more than 100 exhibitions across Europe and the US. The former Executive Director of LIMN ART GALLERY and Senior Curator at DEPICT, she champions technology-driven art.
Christopher Duncan
Christopher Robin Duncan is an Oakland-based multidisciplinary artist who uses sun, moon, time, and tides as creative prompts. His sun exposure works involve draping fabrics over objects for six months to a year, creating images between painting and photography. His sonic compositions feature harmonica, tuning forks, and field recordings, while recent ceramic work includes instruments and functional pieces.
Mark Dion
Mark Dion is an internationally recognized artist who studied at Hartford Art School (BFA 1986), School of Visual Arts, and Whitney Museum's Independent Study Program. He holds honorary doctorates from University of Hartford (2002) and Wagner Free Institute (2015), plus an Honorary Fellowship from Falmouth University (2014).
Cheryl Derricote
Cheryl Derricotte is a visual artist and sculptor. Her favorite medium is glass, and she also creates works on paper and textiles. Originally from Washington, DC, she lives and makes art in San Francisco, CA. Her art has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Francisco Examiner, KQED, MerciSF and The San Francisco Business Times.
Jen de los Reyes
Jen de los Reyes, born in Winnipeg, was shaped by the mid-90s Riot grrrl and DIY music scene. As a show organizer, zine creator, and band member, she developed foundational skills that inform her current creative practice. Her graduate work at University of Regina helped her recognize organizing as integral to her artistic work.
Catherine Clark
Catharine Clark is the founder and director of Catharine Clark Gallery, a San Francisco contemporary art gallery established in 1991. Known for building lasting artist relationships, she has expanded the gallery with initiatives like EXiT bookstore and BOXBLUR performance program. A San Francisco native with professional dance background, her art passion began through family exposure.
Abby Chen
Asian Art Museum Curator Abby Chen received the 2024 NAEA AACIG Distinguished Art Educator Award. Her experimental approach explores intersectionalities of race, sexuality, gender, nation, migration, and technology in the United States and Asia. Her award-winning exhibitions have helped reshape the narrative of contemporary Asian art, including After Hope: Videos of Resistance, Chanel Miller: I was I am I will be, Kongkee: Warring States Cyberpunk, and Into View: Bernice Bing.
Julie Chang
Julie Chang is a San Francisco-based contemporary artist with an MFA from Stanford University (2007) and degrees from Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the San Francisco Art Institute, the San Jose Museum of Art, and galleries in Washington DC and Istanbul. She's represented by Hosfelt Gallery.
Jeff Chang
Jeff Chang is a writer, host, and cultural organizer specializing in culture, politics, arts, and music. His latest book Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America debuted in September 2025. He hosts the Signal Award-winning podcast Edge of Reason and Notes From the Edge.
Julie Casemore
Julie Casemore is a gallerist and curator who founded Casemore Gallery in San Francisco in 2015, specializing in contemporary photographic practices. Located within Minnesota Street Project, the gallery represents established artists like Larry Sultan's Estate and emerging West Coast photographers. She previously worked at Stephen Wirtz Gallery and exhibits at major international art fairs.
Thi Bui
Thi Bui is a Vietnamese-American graphic memoirist who fled Vietnam in 1978 as a refugee. Her acclaimed debut The Best We Could Do won numerous awards and made Bill Gates' top five books. She's also a Caldecott Honor winner for illustrating A Different Pond and is currently working on graphic nonfiction about immigration detention.
Demetri Broxton
Demetri Broxton is a Bay Area artist, independent curator, and Executive Director of Root Division in San Francisco. Born in Oakland, he holds a BFA from UC Berkeley and MA from San Francisco State. His internationally exhibited work is in collections including the de Young Museum and the Crocker Art Museum.
Lisa Brown
Lisa Brown is a New York Times bestselling illustrator, writer, and cartoonist. Her picture books include The Airport Book, The Hospital Book, Mummy Cat, and The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming. She's created graphic novels like The Phantom Twin and teaches at the California College of the Arts while chairing 826 Valencia's board.
Cari Borja
Cari Borja approaches her work like an anthropologist, exploring cultural production through fashion, film, and food. With a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, she has designed clothing collections, hosted 94 salon dinners, and created immersive installations. She's currently working on gathering-focused books and serves as creative director for various organizations.
Natasha Boas
Dr. Natasha Boas is a French-American transnational independent curator, scholar, and writer based in San Francisco and Paris. Over 30 years, she has contributed groundbreaking exhibitions and scholarship for notable museums while teaching curatorial practice. She approaches curating as storytelling, linking under-represented artists within a broader, more inclusive art history narrative.
Amy Berk
Amy Berk is an artist and educator who taught at San Francisco Art Institute since 2006. She directs the award-winning City Studio program engaging underserved youth through art. She co-founded the Meridian Interns Program and exhibits her work internationally. Since 2019, she collaborates on ARTIVATE, creating opportunities for youth art-making and citizenship.
Sadie Barnette
Sadie Barnette was born in Oakland and holds degrees from CalArts and UC San Diego. She has presented solo exhibitions at the SFMOMA, the Walker Art Center, the ICA Los Angeles, and The Kitchen NYC. Her work is in many permanent collections, including the Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum.
Inga Bard
Inga Bard is a Ukrainian-American artist and nonprofit founder based in San Francisco. Her work explores misinformation, surveillance capitalism, and public narratives, employing beauty to insist on hope and optimism. She co-founded multiple initiatives including the SHACK15 Art Prize and Art Bae magazine, directing over $1M to Bay Area artists.
Lynne Baer
Lynne Baer is an Independent Art Advisor with over 25 years of experience in public art. She has worked with cities, affordable housing projects, and private foundations including the Packard Foundation. Lynne advised the UCSF Medical Center on its permanent art selection and has lectured nationally on art investing and public art.
Claire Astrow
Claire Astrow is an artist originally from Los Angeles, now residing in San Francisco. She received her BA in Art Practice from University of California, Berkeley. From 2020-21 she held a screenprinting fellowship at Kala Art Institute. From 2017-18 she was awarded the Blau-Gold Fellowship at Root Division. She has shown work at HIT Gallery, Soft Times, Mini Mart, Crisis Club, and Root Division.
Claudia Altman-Siegal
Claudia Altman-Siegel founded Altman-Siegel in 2009, focusing on internationally recognized, museum-level artists who contribute to cultural dialogue. The San Francisco gallery presents significant Bay Area artists while introducing international artists to the city. The program emphasizes young and emerging artists, complemented by historical exhibitions that provide depth and context.
Verda Alexander
Verda Alexander is a Nicaragua-born, San Francisco-based designer, climate activist, and artist. As Editor-at-Large at Metropolis Magazine and co-founder of Studio O+A, she's spent 30 years redefining workplaces. She co-hosts the climate podcast Break Some Dishes and champions creative solutions that challenge conventional design wisdom.
Zully Adler
Solomon "Zully" Adler is a curator and Oxford doctoral candidate studying the artist Martin Wong. Adler’s projects focus on alternative California practices from the late twentieth century, and he has curated exhibitions at the SFMOMA, Vernon Gardens, Los Angeles, and Arcadia Missa, London. He’s received myriad awards, including the Watson Fellowship, the Marshall Scholarship (University of Cambridge), and the Clarendon Scholarship (Oxford). He runs the Goaty Tapes music label.
Janet Bishop
Janet Bishop is Chief Curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Over her thirty-year career at the institution, she has served as curator for exhibitions including "Matisse/Diebenkorn" (2016–17), "The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant Garde" (2011–12), and the critically acclaimed "Ruth Asawa: Retrospective" (2025). Bishop holds a BA in art history and psychology from Cornell University and an MA in art history from Columbia University.
Stephanie Fine Sasse
Stephanie Fine Sasse combines neuroscience, education, and design. With a Harvard background in neuroscience and psychology, she developed I Am a Scientist, reaching over a million students. She co-authored Science Not Silence (MIT Press) and organized the March for Science, mobilizing over a million worldwide. At The Plenary, Co., she builds immersive exhibitions and interactive salons integrating science, art, and community to inspire civic engagement.
Jane Ganahl
Jane Ganahl is a Bay Area journalist, author, event producer, teacher, and animal activist. In 1999, she co-founded the Litquake literary festival, now the West Coast's largest, with Jack Boulware. During nearly four decades with Hearst newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle, she penned the popular Single Minded column. She authored the memoir Naked on the Page and edited the anthology Single Woman of a Certain Age.
Rob Saunders
Rob Saunders, a letter arts collector for over 40 years, founded The Letterform Archive to share his private collection with the public. Since opening in February 2015, the Archive offers hands-on access to a curated collection of over 100,000 items spanning lettering, typography, calligraphy, and graphic design across thousands of years of history. It has since welcomed over 20,000 guests from more than 30 countries.
Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Ingrid Rojas Contreras was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. Her memoir, The Man Who Could Move Clouds, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and National Book Critics Circle Award. Her debut novel, Fruit of the Drunken Tree, won the California Book Award silver medal in First Fiction. She is a Visiting Writer at Saint Mary's College and lives in California.
Bridget Quinn
Bridget Quinn is author of She Votes: How U.S. Women Won Suffrage, and What Happened Next (Amazon Best History 2020) and award-winning Broad Strokes: 15 Women Who Made Art and Made History (Amazon Best Art 2017, translated into four languages). NPR praised its "spunky attitudinal, SMART writing." Her current book is Portrait of a Woman: Art, Rivalry & Revolution in the Life of Adélaïde Labille-Guiard.
Healther Holt
Heather Holt is an Associate Director with ODC, a groundbreaking contemporary arts institution, which delivers its mission through a world class dance company, an innovative presenting theater and digital platform, and a dance school for movers of all ages and abilities. For decades, Holt has served as a passionate advocate for arts and artists in San Francisco, Bay Area, with deep experience in non-profit management, curating, fundraising, events and hospitality.
Meg Shiffler
Meg Shiffler is a Bay Area–based curator, writer, and arts leader. In 2025, she launched Cities of Glass, a ten-year independent curatorial initiative commissioning site-specific works worldwide. She is the inaugural Director of Artist Space Trust, the nation’s first Community Land Trust for artists. She has worked for the SF Arts Commission (SF), New Museum and Andrea Rosen Gallery (NYC) and co-founded Consolidated Works (Seattle).
Claudia Schmuckli
Claudia Schmuckli is Chief Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. She has curated over 20 exhibitions and installations, including Lee Mingwei: Rituals of Care (2024), Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence (2023), Judy Chicago: A Retrospective (2021), and Uncanny Valley: Being Human in the Age of AI (2020). She also curated Isaac Julien: I Dream a World, the artist's first US retrospective.
Ben Venom
Ben Venom holds an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute (2007). His work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the Levi Strauss Museum (Germany), the National Folk Museum of Korea, and the Taubman Museum of Art. He has been featured by NPR, CBS Sunday Morning, and Playboy. Recent residencies include MASS MoCA and the de Young Museum, and he is Studio Manager of The Space Program SF.
Amanda Uhle
Amanda Uhle is Executive Director and Publisher of McSweeney's, The Believer, and Illustoria, an art and storytelling magazine for young readers. She co-founded The International Congress of Youth Voices with Dave Eggers and co-edits the I, Witness series. Previously, Uhle was executive director of 826michigan for over 11 years. Her writing appears in The Washington Post, Politico, and Newsweek. Her memoir, Destroy This House, is published by Simon & Schuster.
Kal Spelletich
For 25 years, Kal Spelletich has explored the human-machine interface, reconnecting people with intense experiences through technology. His interactive work has at times required participants to operate dangerous machinery, probing boundaries between fear, control, and exhilaration. Exhibited at San Francisco's De Young Museum, the SFMOMA, the Exploratorium, the YBCA, and internationally, he is represented by Catharine Clark Gallery.
Tabitha Soren
After a career as a reporter, Soren studied art and photography at Stanford University. Her work has been published in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and other publications. Her photographs have been exhibited worldwide and are in permanent collections including the Getty Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the High Museum. She authored the monographs Surface Tension (2021) and Fantasy Life (2017).
Rebecca Solnit
Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than twenty books on feminism, western and urban history, social change, hope, and catastrophe. Her acclaimed works include Men Explain Things to Me, Hope in the Dark, Orwell's Roses, and A Paradise Built in Hell. A product of California public education, she writes regularly for The Guardian, serves on the board of Oil Change International, and launched the climate project Not Too Late (nottoolateclimate.com).
Griff Williams
Griff Williams is an American painter, publisher, art instructor, filmmaker, and gallerist who owns Gallery 16. His paintings have been exhibited worldwide at major museums including San Diego Museum of Art, Orange County Museum of Art, and San Jose Museum of Art, with reviews in Art in America and Frieze.
Lena Wolff
Lena Wolff is a San Francisco Bay Area artist, craftswoman, and democracy activist whose work spans folk art, minimalism, and political expression through drawing, sculpture, and public projects. She founded Art for Democracy in 2017, creating national voter participation campaigns. Her work is collected by major institutions including SFMOMA and Berkeley Art Museum.
Tanya Zimbardo
Tanya Zimbardo is San Francisco-based curator and writer. Over the past decade, she has organized exhibitions and screenings for a range of Bay Area nonprofit organizations including di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, Mills College Art Museum, San Francisco Cinematheque, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Sarah Vowell
Sarah Vowell is the author of seven nonfiction books, including Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, Unfamiliar Fishes, The Wordy Shipmates, and Assassination Vacation. She was a contributing editor for This American Life from 1996 to 2008 and has worked for the New York Times, Salon, Time, Spin, and GQ.
Catherine Wagner
Catherine Wagner is a conceptual artist working in sculpture, installation and photographer who has received the Rome Prize, the Guggenheim Fellowship, NEA Fellowships, and the Ferguson Award. Time Magazine named her one of the Fine Arts Innovators of the Year, and her work is in the collections of MOMA, the Whitney Museum, LACMA, and SFMOMA. She is Emeritus Professor of Studio Art at Mills College at Northeastern University.
Chris Ware
Chris Ware (b. 1967, Omaha) is a master comic artist known for New Yorker covers and complex graphic novels about suburban Midwestern life. His stories explore memory and identity through characters like Jimmy Corrigan and Rusty Brown, often serialized in publications before becoming standalone books through his Acme Novelty Library.
Sarah Thornton
Sarah Thornton is a sociologist who writes about art, design and people. Author of four critically acclaimed books including international bestseller *Seven Days in the Art World*, she's known as "the Jane Goodall of the art world." Her latest book *Tits Up* explores mammary glands' universal truths and cultural meanings.
Adrian Tomine
Adrian Tomine is a bestselling author, screenwriter, and New Yorker cover artist. His award-winning graphic novels include Summer Blonde, Shortcomings and Killing and Dying, which was named one of NPR’s Best Books of the Year. In 2023, Shortcomings was adapted to film by director Randall Park, from a screenplay by Tomine. His short stories were also adapted into the 2021 French film Paris, 13th District.
Isaac Vasquez Avila
Isaac Vazquez Avila, born in Mexico City, is a San Francisco-based painter and sculptor. He holds a BA in Latino/a Studies from SFSU and MFA from UC Berkeley (2016). Avila runs Avila Mio Studio, creating murals and custom installations. His work has been exhibited at Berkeley Art Museum, Guerrero Gallery, and other venues.
Chinzalée Sonami
Chinzalée Sonami runs PALA, a ceramics practice based in her hometown of Oakland. Named "PALA" (Tibetan for "father") after her late Tibetan potter father, she views her work as a time wormhole where father and daughter occupy the same creative space through clay, continuing his artistic legacy.
Steve Thompson
Steve Thompson, raised in rural Southern California, has worked in fabrication since age eight, learning welding and metalwork from his grandfather. After studying physics and philosophy at UC Irvine, he designed dwellings on a West Marin farm and founded Stochastic Labs' fabrication shop. Over the years he has worked with numerous artists, designers, and institutions to turn abstract concepts into meaningful, tangible works. He built and now runs Peak Design’s prototyping lab.
Sunra Thompson
Sunra Thompson is a designer and art director at McSweeney’s. Under his helm, the McSweeney's Quarterly has been a finalist for multiple National Magazine Awards in Design, as well as for the Best Illustrated Cover. He lives in Berkeley, California.
Frank Smigiel
Frank Smigiel is a visual arts curator, educator, and writer serving as Director of Arts Programming & Partnerships at Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture in San Francisco. Former Associate Curator at SFMOMA, he has collaborated with diverse artists and focuses on theater/time-based art intersections, artist commerce, and queer histories.
David Shrigley
British artist David Shrigley (b. 1968, Macclesfield) is known for distinctive drawings and satirical commentary on everyday life. His deadpan humor captures overheard conversations and compulsive observations. Working across sculpture, installation, animation, and music, he seeks wider audiences beyond galleries through publications and collaborations.
Jessica Silverman
Jessica Silverman founded her internationally renowned contemporary art gallery in 2008. With an MA in Curatorial Practice from California College of the Arts, she builds artists' careers and supports collectors. Gallery artists' works are acquired by major museums including MoMA, Tate, and SFMOMA. She regularly shows at Art Basel.
Leah Rosenberg
Leah Rosenberg works across artistic media to spark new experiences of color. Using painting, installation, printmaking, sculpture, performance, and video she invites viewers to consider how color can be perceived both multi-sensorially and multi-dimensionally. By creating such enriched encounters, her work strives to deepen our understanding of the emotional and psychological impact of color in everyday life.
Ted Russell
Ted Russell led arts strategy at Kenneth Rainin Foundation and served as Senior Program Officer at James Irvine Foundation (2005-2016). He holds a BA from Yale and MBA from UCLA Anderson. He's a Nasher Haemisegger Fellow at SMU DataArts and served as board chair of Grantmakers in the Arts (2020-2021).
Dr. Scott D. Sampson
Scott D. Sampson is a Canadian-American paleontologist and science communicator, currently Executive Director of California Academy of Sciences. Previously Vice President of Research & Collections and Chief Curator at Denver Museum of Nature & Science, he's also known for hosting the PBS Kids show Dinosaur Train.
Boots Riley
Boots" Riley is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, rapper, and communist activist.He is the lead vocalist of The Coup and Street Sweeper Social Club. He made his feature-film directorial debut with Sorry to Bother You, which he also wrote. In 2023, the television show I'm a Virgo premiered, which he wrote and directed. Riley is teaming with NEON for I Love Boosters, his latest film, which will star Keke Palmer and Demi Moore.
Larry Rinder
Lawrence Rinder directed UC Berkeley's Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (2008-2020). Previously, he was Founding Director of the Wattis Institute, Dean at California College of the Arts, and Curator of Contemporary at the Whitney Museum. He also writes art criticism, poetry, drama, and fiction.
Kim Stanley Robinson
Kim Stanley Robinson is an acclaimed American science fiction author, best known for his Mars trilogy. A multiple award winner—including Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards—The New Yorker recognizes him as "one of the greatest living science-fiction writers." His work has profoundly shaped contemporary science fiction literature.
Nicholas Price
Nicholas Price works as Master Printer at Magnolia Editions in Oakland, California. An alum of the San Francisco Art Institute, he also served as a Studio Artist at Root Division (2012-2014) before returning in 2016 to pilot their Alumni Studio Artist Program.
Renny Pritiken
Renny Pritikin is a San Francisco Bay Area curator, art writer, and poet. He has served as chief curator at New Langton Arts, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, The Nelson Gallery at UC Davis, and the Contemporary Jewish Museum. Pritikin has authored five poetry books and a memoir.
Rigo23
Rigo 23 is a Portuguese-born visual artist and sculptor. He is known in the San Francisco community for having painted a number of large, graphic "sign" murals including: One Tree next to the U.S. Route 101 on-ramp at 10th and Bryant Street, Innercity Home on a large public housing structure, Sky/Ground on a tall abandoned building at 3rd and Mission Street, and Extinct over a Shell gas station. Rigo earned his BFA degree from the San Francisco Art Institute, and an MFA degree from Stanford University.
Yetende Olagbaju
yétúndé ọlágbajú is a Nigerian/Gullah-Geeche research-based artist, creative producer, and cultural strategist based in California. Their work explores the question: "What must we reckon with as we build a future, together?" Through sonic, sculptural, and collaborative practices, ọlágbajú examines interdependence and transformation within Black diaspora experiences, untangling possibilities emerging from collective reckonings.
Christo Oropeza
San Francisco native Christo Oropeza is a "cultural worker" encompassing roles as artist, curator, gallerist, producer, and museum staffer. Recent projects include SFMOMA murals, Facebook's Artist in Residence program, and gallery exhibitions. He co-founded Incline Gallery, was named to YBCA 100, and established San Pancho Art Collective.
Woody De Othello
Woody De Othello, based in Oakland, California, transforms everyday objects—clocks, phones, fans—into clay and bronze vessels of psychic significance, drawing from African nkisi traditions. His sculptures and two-dimensional works create surrealistic distortions of scale and time, making the familiar uncanny and illegible.
Deborah Munk
As Manager of Sustainability Education Programs at Recology, Deborah Munk has supported Bay Area artists for 25 years through the Artist in Residence and Educational Tour Programs. She has expanded the AIR Program across the western region and developed educational tours engaging thousands annually, fostering creativity and conservation.
Robyn O’Neil
Robyn O’Neil lives in Washington State. She mainly makes drawings. Her work was included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial, in addition to over fifty noted museums throughout the world. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, an Artadia grant, and the Hunting Prize. She wrote and art directed the film “WE, THE MASSES,” which won several awards. She also hosts the weekly podcast “ME READING STUFF.” Robyn’s work is represented by Susan Inglett Gallery, Inman Gallery, and Western Exhibitions.
Ellen Oh
Ellen is a creative producer and arts administrator with 25 years of experience across diverse organizations, and is the Director of Interdisciplinary Arts Program at Stanford University. She catalyzes programs, curates teams, and demonstrates the arts' transformative impact. Ellen serves on advisory boards for Root Division and Headlands Center for the Arts while raising two creative daughters.
Susan Miller
Susan Miller is a seasoned arts and academic professional who has developed four interdisciplinary campus research groups at UC Berkeley since 2008, including the Berkeley Center for New Media. Previously executive director of San Francisco's New Langton Arts, she specializes in video, media arts, and Bay Area creative practice, curating exhibitions internationally.
Jonathan Carver Moore
Jonathan Carver Moore is San Francisco's only openly gay Black male-owned contemporary art gallery, specializing in emerging and established BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and women artists. Committed to amplifying underrepresented voices through a Black queer lens, the gallery champions community accessibility, welcoming novice and avid collectors alike while celebrating diversity throughout the art world.
Jennifer Morla
Jennifer Morla founded Morla Design in 1984, creating acclaimed motion graphics, branding, and retail environments. She's received graphic design's highest honors: the AIGA Medal and Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Award. Her work appears in MOMA, LACMA, and Smithsonian collections, with SFMOMA acquiring over 50 pieces.
Michelle Mansour
Michelle Mansour is an Egyptian-American artist, educator, and curator based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has been exhibited at venues including The deYoung Museum and SFMOMA Artists Gallery. She holds an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute and has participated in residencies at Djerassi and internationally.
Jill Manton
Nationally recognized public art leader with entrepreneurial skills and curatorial expertise. Former SF Arts Commission Director of Programs and Public Art, she authored the $50 million Treasure Island Arts Master Plan and established San Francisco's Public Art Trust. She has raised over $72.5M for art initiatives and received the Rockefeller Foundation Grant.
Barry McGee
Barry McGee, a San Francisco Art Institute graduate, emerged from the Mission School movement and street art culture as "Twist." His work addresses social issues through various personas, featuring his signature droopy-eyed male figure representing empathy for the homeless. Using geometric patterns, found objects, and the "cluster method," McGee creates art examining public versus private space while advocating for marginalized communities.
Asha Kilgallen Mcgee
Asha Kilgallen McGee is a curator and communications coordinator based in the North Bay. She earned her B.A. in Art History from UC Santa Barbara in 2023, exploring how contemporary art holds memory, builds community, and speaks across disciplines. Inspired by her Bay Area roots, she collaborates with emerging and established artists.
Amy Kisch
Amy Kisch is a social impact strategist and curator who founded Art+Action, Collect For Change™, and AKArt Advisory. She leverages art to inspire action and deepen public discussions around collective responsibility. A 2020 YBCA 100 Honoree with an MSW, she previously ran Sotheby's global VIP program and holds a BA from Columbia University.
Amy Kurzwell
Amy Kurzweil is a New Yorker cartoonist and the author of two graphic memoirs: Flying Couch and Artificial: A Love Story, which was named a Best Book of 2023 by NPR, the New Yorker, and Kirkus. Her writing, comics and cartoons have also been published in The Verge, the New York Times Book Review, the Believer, and many other places. Amy has taught widely, in public and private school, in universities and online.
Maria Kalman
Maira Kalman has written/illustrated over 30 books for adults and children. She has been a frequent contributor to The New York Times and The New Yorker. She has created textiles for Isaac Mizrahi and Kate Spade and sets for Mark Morris. Her art has been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world. Her fine art is represented by Mary Ryan Gallery.
Dorka Keehn
Dorka Keehn is known for innovative public artworks including leading fundraising for The Bay Lights on San Francisco Bay Bridge. A former SF Arts Commissioner, she co-founded Sites Unseen, activating underused alleys with arts programming. She serves on various arts boards and creates acclaimed site-specific installations with collaborator Brian Goggin.
Em Kettner
Em Kettner is a Richmond, CA-based artist and writer. Recent solo shows include exhibitions at François Ghebaly Gallery, Chapter NY, and HARPY. Her work appears in major collections including MFA Boston and has been featured in ArtForum, Art in America, and Paris Review. She's represented by François Ghebaly Gallery.
Chris Johanson
Chris Johanson is a Los Angeles and Portland-based artist and key figure in San Francisco's Mission School post-punk movement. His diverse practice encompasses painting, drawing, sculpture, design, and music, exploring spirituality, sociology, and environmental themes through conceptually open works that encourage contemplation of everyday life experiences.
PJ Johnston
PJ Johnston is the former executive director of the San Francisco Film Commission and was president of the San Francisco Arts Commission for nine years. He has served on boards of various nonprofit organizations focused on arts and advocacy for women and African Americans, and is currently a board member of the African American Arts & Culture Complex.
Spike Jonze
Spike Jonze is the versatile filmmaker behind the acclaimed films Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Where the Wild Things Are. He won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Her, which he also directed. As a producer, his credits include Michel Gondry’s Human Nature and Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York. He is also one of the creators and producers of the Jackass TV show and films. A member of the Advisory Board of 826LA, he lives in the Los Angeles area.
Johanna Jackson
Johanna Jackson (b. 1972, Springfield, MA) is a multidisciplinary artist creating sculptural and functional objects like vessels and household items that transcend utility to become profound art. Recent exhibitions include 12.26 Dallas and Tennis Elbow NYC. She collaborates with Chris Johanson on furniture and lives between Portland and Topanga Canyon.
Annice Jacoby
Annice Jacoby is recognized for innovative work in public art, literature, and visual arts. Highlights include *Street Art San Francisco: Mission Muralismo* (Abrams), Cultural Encounters for the deYoung Museum, and City of Poets for San Francisco Public Library. Her work expands art in public life, employing poetry, theater, and media to examine critical issues.
Maria Jenson
Maria Jenson is Creative and Executive Director of SOMArts, advancing innovative strategies to sustain creative communities. She has deepened the organization's commitment to racial equity through groundbreaking exhibitions and expanded public programs. A Getty Foundation Executive Leadership Institute graduate, she previously worked at SFMOMA and founded ArtPadSF.
Liz Hickok
San Francisco artist Liz Hickok creates immersive artworks blending low and high technology through photography, sculpture, video, and installation. Using playful materials, she intermingles science and nature in whimsical spaces. Her recent projects incorporate augmented reality and interactive technologies, fostering personal connections and bridging the gap between artist and viewer.
Candice Huey
Candace Huey is an interdisciplinary curator and art historian who founded re.riddle, an experimental contemporary art gallery. She has worked for Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Bonham's auction house, and various Bay Area galleries. With degrees from The Courtauld and UC Berkeley, she serves on SECA Council at SFMOMA and Northern California ArtTable Leadership Committee.
Valerie Imus
Valerie Imus is a curator, writer, and artist with fifteen years of Bay Area exhibition experience. Currently Artistic Director at Southern Exposure, she has curated numerous projects including "Over the Wall" and "New New Games." She collaborates with The Citizens Laboratory and OPENrestaurant, and holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Paul Henderson
Paul Henderson is a fourth-generation San Franciscan art curator, collector, and cultural strategist from Bayview-Hunter's Point. He serves on boards of the California African American Museum and ArtLikeMe, advancing equity-focused cultural initiatives. His Henderson Art Collection intentionally introduces audiences to emerging artists while challenging cultural stereotypes and expanding arts representation.
Liz Hernández
Liz Hernández creates art rooted in storytelling, using painting, sculpture, and textiles to blur the boundary between the real and the imagined. Driven by material experimentation, she studies ancestral techniques such as embroidery and repujado, reinterpreting these Mexican craft traditions to shape a visual language of her own. She has exhibited in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and Mexico City. Her work is held in the permanent collections of SFMOMA, the de Young Museum, and KADIST
John Herschend
Jonn Herschend is an interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and experimental publisher raised in a midwestern amusement park. His work explores fiction, reality, and narrative structures explaining everyday chaos. He's exhibited at Whitney Museum, Telluride Film Festival, and SFMOMA, co-founded THE THING Quarterly, and is a Fleishhacker Eureka Fellow and recipient of the SFMOMA SECA Award.
Joyce Grimm
Joyce Grimm was Chief Curator at Adobe's Festival of the Impossible and Founder of Triple Base Gallery. She annually reinvents interactive exhibitions by showcasing thought-provoking artworks with cutting-edge technology, including virtual and augmented reality experiences and sensory-enhancing art installations that push the boundaries of traditional gallery experiences.
Maria Guzman Capron
Maria A. Guzmán Capron creates vibrant textile works exploring cultural hybridity and non-binary identity. Born in Milan to Colombian-Peruvian parents, later moving to Texas, the artist examines assimilation and visibility through multilayered fabric constructions. Their practice manifests the competing cultural influences that shape us, highlighting our multiple, sometimes conflicting identities.
Shawn Harris
Shawn Harris is an award-winning author and illustrator. His debut, Have You Ever Seen A Flower, received a Caldecott Honor. He illustrated the Newbery Medal-winning The Eyes and the Impossible and won the Bull-Bransom Award for A Polar Bear in the Snow.
Rudolf Frieling
Rudolf Frieling, SFMOMA's Curator of Media Arts since 2006, organized major exhibitions including The Art of Participation (2008), Bruce Conner: It's All True (2016), the Nam June Paik retrospective (2021), and What Matters (2023-2024). He taught at California College of the Arts and San Francisco Art Institute.
Ted Gioia
Ted Gioia is a San Francisco-based writer and arts leader serving as Program & Development Director at Arion Press. His essays have appeared in The New Republic, New York Magazine, and VQR. His debut fiction will be published by First Bite Press in 2025, and he's currently writing a novel.
Andrew Sean Greer
Greer is an American novelist and short story writer who received the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel *Less*. Author of six works of fiction including *The Story of a Marriage* and *The Confessions of Max Tivoli*, he has taught at Iowa Writers' Workshop and been an NEA Fellow and National Book Award judge.
Marcel Dzama
Since 1998, Marcel Dzama has been represented by David Zwirner, exhibiting widely internationally. Drawing from folk vernacular and art-historical influences, his work visualizes childhood fantasies and otherworldly fairy tales. His works are held in major collections including MoMA, Guggenheim, Centre Pompidou, and Tate.
Kristin Farr
Kristin Farr is an artist and has served as a curator, journalist and producer for KQED, Juxtapoz Magazine and Facebook’s original artist-in-residence program. She has created public art installations locally and internationally, and founded the Emmy-winning educational film series, KQED Art School.
Tammy Fortin
Tammy Fortin is a writer and musician who has worked at four art museums, incorporating visual culture into her writing. She established a writing residency at the Broad Art Museum in 2012 and has written for various publications. She recently finished a novel and plays guitar in the band Excuses for Skipping.
Mark Dion
Mark Dion is an internationally recognized artist who studied at Hartford Art School (BFA 1986), School of Visual Arts, and Whitney Museum's Independent Study Program. He holds honorary doctorates from University of Hartford (2002) and Wagner Free Institute (2015), plus an Honorary Fellowship from Falmouth University (2014).
Christopher Duncan
Christopher Robin Duncan is an Oakland-based multidisciplinary artist who uses sun, moon, time, and tides as creative prompts. His sun exposure works involve draping fabrics over objects for six months to a year, creating images between painting and photography. His sonic compositions feature harmonica, tuning forks, and field recordings, while recent ceramic work includes instruments and functional pieces.
Christine Duval
Christine Duval is a visionary art curator with over twenty years of experience creating groundbreaking contemporary exhibitions globally. Specializing in multimedia and digital works, she's organized 100+ exhibitions across Europe and the US. Former Executive Director of LIMN ART GALLERY and Senior Curator at DEPICT, she champions technology-driven art.
Catherine Clark
Catharine Clark is the founder and director of Catharine Clark Gallery, a San Francisco contemporary art gallery established in 1991. Known for building lasting artist relationships, she has expanded the gallery with initiatives like EXiT bookstore and BOXBLUR performance program. A San Francisco native with professional dance background, her art passion began through family exposure.
Jen Delos Reyes
Jen de los Reyes, born in Winnipeg, was shaped by the mid-90s Riot grrrl and DIY music scene. As a show organizer, zine creator, and band member, she developed foundational skills that inform her current creative practice. Her graduate work at University of Regina helped her recognize organizing as integral to her artistic work.
Cheryl Derricote
Cheryl Derricotte is a visual artist. Her favorite medium is glass, and she also makes work on paper and textiles. Originally from Washington, DC, she lives and makes art in San Francisco, CA. Her art has been featured in the New York Times, The Guardian, The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Francisco Examiner, KQED, MerciSF and the San Francisco Business Times.
Jeff Chang
Jeff Chang is a writer, host, and cultural organizer specializing in culture, politics, arts, and music. His upcoming book "Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America" publishes September 2025. He hosts the Signal Award-winning podcast "Edge of Reason" and "Notes From the Edge."
Julie Chang
Julie Chang is a San Francisco-based contemporary artist with an MFA from Stanford University (2007) and degrees from Tufts and School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including venues like San Francisco Art Institute, San Jose Museum of Art, and galleries in Washington DC and Istanbul. She's represented by Hosfelt Gallery.
Abby Chen
Asian Art Museum Curator Abby Chen received the 2024 NAEA AACIG Distinguished Art Educator Award. Her experimental approach explores intersectionalities of race, sexuality, gender, nation, migration, and technology in the United States and Asia. Her award-winning exhibitions have helped reshape the narrative of contemporary Asian art, including After Hope: Videos of Resistance, Chanel Miller: I was I am I will be, Kongkee: Warring States Cyberpunk, and Into View: Bernice Bing.
Demetri Broxton
Demetri Broxton is a Bay Area artist, independent curator, and Executive Director of Root Division in San Francisco. Born in Oakland, he holds a BFA from UC Berkeley and MA from San Francisco State. His internationally exhibited work is in collections including the de Young Museum and Crocker Art Museum.
Julie Casemore
Julie Casemore is a gallerist and curator who founded Casemore Gallery in San Francisco in 2015, specializing in contemporary photographic practices. Located within Minnesota Street Project, the gallery represents established artists like Larry Sultan's Estate and emerging West Coast photographers. She previously worked at Stephen Wirtz Gallery and exhibits at major international art fairs.
Thi Bui
Thi Bui is a Vietnamese-American graphic memoirist who fled Vietnam in 1978 as a refugee. Her acclaimed debut The Best We Could Do won numerous awards and made Bill Gates' top five books. She's also a Caldecott Honor winner for illustrating A Different Pond and is currently working on graphic nonfiction about immigration detention.
Natasha Boas
Dr. Natasha Boas is a French-American transnational independent curator, scholar, and writer based in San Francisco and Paris. Over thirty years, she has contributed groundbreaking exhibitions and scholarship for notable museums while teaching curatorial practice. She approaches curating as storytelling, linking under-represented artists within a broader, more inclusive art history narrative.
Cari Borja
Cari Borja approaches her work like an anthropologist, exploring cultural production through fashion, film, and food. With a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, she has designed clothing collections, hosted 94 salon dinners, and created immersive installations. She's currently working on gathering-focused books and serves as creative director for various organizations.
Lisa Brown
Lisa Brown is a New York Times bestselling illustrator, writer, and cartoonist. Her picture books include The Airport Book, The Hospital Book, Mummy Cat, and The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming. She's created graphic novels like The Phantom Twin and teaches at California College of the Arts while chairing 826 Valencia's board.
Inga Bard
Inga Bard is a Ukrainian-American artist and non-profit founder based in San Francisco. Her work explores misinformation, surveillance capitalism, and public narratives, employing beauty to insist on hope and optimism. She co-founded multiple initiatives including the SHACK15 Art Prize and Art Bae magazine, directing over $1M to Bay Area artists.
Sadie Barnette
Sadie Barnette was born in Oakland and holds degrees from CalArts and UC San Diego. She has presented solo exhibitions at SFMOMA, Walker Art Center, ICA Los Angeles, and The Kitchen NYC. Her work is in permanent collections including the Guggenheim, Met, Whitney, and Brooklyn Museum. A permanent LAX installation is forthcoming.
Amy Berk
Amy Berk is an artist and educator who taught at San Francisco Art Institute since 2006. She directs the award-winning City Studio program engaging underserved youth through art. She co-founded the Meridian Interns Program and shows internationally. Since 2019, she collaborates on ARTIVATE, creating opportunities for youth art-making and citizenship.
Claudia Altman-Siegal
Claudia Altman-Siegel founded Altman-Siegel in 2009, focusing on internationally recognized, museum-level artists who contribute to cultural dialogue. The San Francisco gallery presents significant Bay Area artists while introducing international artists to the city. The program emphasizes young and emerging artists, complemented by historical exhibitions that provide depth and context.
Claire Astrow
Claire Astrow is an artist originally from Los Angeles, now residing in San Francisco. She received her BA in Art Practice from University of California, Berkeley. From 2020-21 she held a screenprinting fellowship at Kala Art Institute. From 2017-18 she was awarded the Blau-Gold Fellowship at Root Division. She has shown work at HIT Gallery, Soft Times, Mini Mart, Crisis Club, and Root Division.
Lynne Baer
Lynne Baer is an Independent Art Advisor with over twenty-five years of experience in public art. She has worked with cities, affordable housing projects, and private foundations including the Packard Foundation. Lynne advised UCSF Medical Center on art selection and has lectured nationally on art investing and public art.
Janet Bishop
Solomon "Zully" Adler is a curator and Oxford doctoral candidate studying artist Martin Wong. His projects focus on alternative California practices from the late twentieth century. He has curated exhibitions at SFMOMA, Vernon Gardens, and Arcadia Missa, runs Goaty Tapes music label, and received fellowships including Watson, Marshall, and Clarendon.
Verda Alexander
Verda Alexander is a Nicaragua-born, San Francisco-based designer, climate activist, and artist. As Editor-at-Large at Metropolis Magazine and co-founder of Studio O+A, she's spent 30 years redefining workplaces. She co-hosts the climate podcast "Break Some Dishes" and champions creative solutions that challenge conventional design wisdom.
Zully Adler
Solomon "Zully" Adler is a curator and Oxford doctoral candidate studying artist Martin Wong. His projects focus on alternative California practices from the late twentieth century. He has curated exhibitions at SFMOMA, Vernon Gardens, and Arcadia Missa, runs Goaty Tapes music label, and received fellowships including Watson, Marshall, and Clarendon.
Tucker Nichols
Tucker Nichols is a Northern California-based artist working in painting, drawing, sculpture, mail art, books, and installations. His work has been featured at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Denver Art Museum, and internationally. His drawings have appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times. Recent books include Flowers for Things I Don't Know How to Say (2024) and Mostly Everything (2025).
Sarah Thornton
Sarah Thornton is a sociologist who writes about art, design and people. Author of four critically acclaimed books including international bestseller Seven Days in the Art World, she's known as "the Jane Goodall of the art world." Her latest book Tits Up explores mammary glands' universal truths and cultural meanings.
Dorka Keehn
Dorka Keehn is an artist and curator known for achieving groundbreaking public artworks, including leading the fundraising for The Bay Lights on San Francisco Bay Bridge. A former San Francisco Arts Commissioner, she co-founded Sites Unseen, activating underused alleys with arts programming. She serves on multiple boards of art organizations, and has created award-winning public artworks with collaborator Brian Goggin.
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Heather Holt
Heather Holt is an Associate Director with ODC, a groundbreaking contemporary arts institution, which delivers its mission through a world class dance company, an innovative presenting theater and digital platform, and a dance school for movers of all ages and abilities. For decades, Holt has served as a passionate advocate for arts and artists in San Francisco, Bay Area, with deep experience in non-profit management, curating, fundraising, events and hospitality.
Jane Ganahl
Jane Ganahl is a Bay Area journalist, author, event producer, teacher, and animal activist. In 1999, she co-founded the Litquake literary festival, now the West Coast's largest, with Jack Boulware. During nearly four decades with Hearst newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle, she penned the popular Single Minded column. She authored the memoir Naked on the Page and edited the anthology Single Woman of a Certain Age.
Stephanie Fine Sasse
Stephanie Fine Sasse combines neuroscience, education, and design. With a Harvard background in neuroscience and psychology, she developed I Am a Scientist, reaching over a million students. She co-authored Science Not Silence (MIT Press) and organized the March for Science, mobilizing over a million worldwide. At The Plenary, Co., she builds immersive exhibitions and interactive salons integrating science, art, and community to inspire civic engagement.
Rob Saunders
Rob Saunders, a letter arts collector for over 40 years, founded The Letterform Archive to share his private collection with the public. Since opening in February 2015, the Archive offers hands-on access to a curated collection of over 100,000 items spanning lettering, typography, calligraphy, and graphic design across thousands of years of history. It has since welcomed over 20,000 guests from more than 30 countries.
Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Ingrid Rojas Contreras was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. Her memoir, The Man Who Could Move Clouds, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and National Book Critics Circle Award. Her debut novel, Fruit of the Drunken Tree, won the California Book Award silver medal in First Fiction. She is a Visiting Writer at Saint Mary's College and lives in California.
Bridget Quinn
Bridget Quinn is author of She Votes: How U.S. Women Won Suffrage, and What Happened Next (Amazon Best History 2020) and award-winning Broad Strokes: 15 Women Who Made Art and Made History (Amazon Best Art 2017, translated into four languages). NPR praised its "spunky attitudinal, SMART writing." Her current book is Portrait of a Woman: Art, Rivalry & Revolution in the Life of Adélaïde Labille-Guiard.
Rebecca Solnit
Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than twenty books on feminism, western and urban history, social change, hope, and catastrophe. Her acclaimed works include Men Explain Things to Me, Hope in the Dark, Orwell's Roses, and A Paradise Built in Hell. A product of California public education, she writes regularly for The Guardian, serves on the board of Oil Change International, and launched the climate project Not Too Late (nottoolateclimate.com).
Claudia Schmuckli
Claudia Schmuckli is Chief Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. She has curated over 20 exhibitions and installations, including Lee Mingwei: Rituals of Care (2024), Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence (2023), Judy Chicago: A Retrospective (2021), and Uncanny Valley: Being Human in the Age of AI (2020). She also curated Isaac Julien: I Dream a World, the artist's first US retrospective.
Meg Shiffler
Meg Shiffler is a Bay Area–based curator, writer, and arts leader. In 2025, she launched Cities of Glass, a ten-year independent curatorial initiative commissioning site-specific works worldwide. She is the inaugural Director of Artist Space Trust, the nation’s first Community Land Trust for artists. She has worked for the SF Arts Commission (SF), New Museum and Andrea Rosen Gallery (NYC) and co-founded Consolidated Works (Seattle).
Amanda Uhle
Amanda Uhle is Executive Director and Publisher of McSweeney's, The Believer, and Illustoria. She co-founded The International Congress of Youth Voices with Dave Eggers and co-edits the I, Witness series. Previously, she was executive director of 826michigan for over 11 years. Her writing appears in The Washington Post, Politico, and Newsweek. Her memoir, Destroy This House, is published by Simon & Schuster.
Kal Spelletich
For 25 years, Kal Spelletich has explored the human-machine interface, using technology to reconnect people with intense, real-life experiences. His interactive work requires participants to operate often dangerous machinery, probing boundaries between fear, control, and exhilaration. His work has been exhibited at San Francisco's De Young Museum, SFMOMA, Exploratorium, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, plus internationally. He is represented by Catharine Clark Gallery.
Tabitha Soren
After a career as a reporter, Soren studied art and photography at Stanford University. Her work has been published in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and various other magazines and journals. Soren’s work has been exhibited worldwide, and is in the permanent collections of the Getty Museum, Los Angeles, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, and many more. She is the author of the books Surface Tension (RVB Books, Paris, 2021) and Fantasy Life (Aperture, 2017).
ART + WATER TEAM
Dave Eggers
In 2002, author Nínive Calegari and artist Dave Eggers cofounded 826 Valencia, the beloved Mission District writing and tutoring center. Celebrating its twenty-third year in San Francisco, the center now has locations all over the city, with major hubs in the Mission, the Tenderloin, and Mission Bay. Eggers has also jump-started many other nonprofits, including ScholarMatch, dedicated to making college accessible to low-income students, and Voice of Witness, a series of books that illuminate human rights crises through oral history. He is also the founder of McSweeney's, the Mission-based publishing company. His drawings and paintings have been widely show and are represented by Electric Works.
JD Beltran
A native San Franciscan who grew up in the Richmond District, JD BELTRAN has been a creative infrastructuralist and arts cheerleader who, for more than 20 years, has advanced groundbreaking solutions and organizational initiatives that address cultural, social, environmental, and economic challenges. She has served on the San Francisco Arts Commission for 16 years, serving as President for 8 them. An award-winning artist with works in museums and collections worldwide, filmmaker, designer, writer, journalist, educator, and master in the use of the serial comma, Beltran has served as a longtime faculty in art, film, design, and technology at the San Francisco Art Institute (her alma mater), CCA, SFSU, and Stanford.
René de Guzman
René de Guzman is a longtime Bay Area curator, artist, and arts consultant. He was one of the founding curators at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts as Visual Arts Curator and Director of Visual Arts, serving from 1993-2007, and subsequently served as the Senior Curator of Art and Director of Exhibition Strategy at the Oakland Museum of California from 2007 - 2021, He also served as Deputy Director for Programs and Engagement at Headlands Center for the Arts, overseeing artist residencies and public programs. For over three decades, he has developed innovative and popular exhibitions for a wide public.
CO-FOUNDER & CO-EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
JD Beltran
A native San Franciscan who grew up in the Richmond District, JD BELTRAN founded and directs the Center for Creative Sustainability in San Francisco, fostering sustainability for artists and the environment. Beltran has been a creative infrastruralist and arts cheerleader who, for more than twenty years, has advanced groundbreaking solutions and organizational initiatives that address cultural, social, environmental, and economic challenges. An award-winning artist, filmmaker, designer, writer, journalist, educator, and master in the use of the serial comma, Beltran has served as a longtime faculty in art, design, and technology at the San Francisco Art Institute (her alma mater), CCA, SFSU, and Stanford.
CONSULTING CO-EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR & CHIEF CURATOR
Rene deGuzman
René de Guzman is a longtime Bay Area curator, artist, and arts consultant. He was one of the founding curators at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts as Visual Arts Curator and Director of Visual Art, serving from 1993 - 2007, and subsequently served as the Senior Curator of Art and then Director of Exhibition Strategy at the Oakland Museum of California, from 2007 to 2021. He also served as the Deputy Director for Programs and Engagement at the Headlands Center for the Arts, overseeing artist residencies and public programs. For over three decades, he has developed innovative and groundbreaking exhibitions that draw wide public engagement.
CO-FOUNDER
Dave Eggers
In 2002, with a small budget and a few friends, author and artist DAVE EGGERS cofounded 826 Valencia, the beloved Mission District writing and tutoring center. Now celebrating its twenty-third year in San Francisco, the center now has locations all over the city, with major hubs in the Mission, the Tenderloin, and Mission Bay. Eggers has also jump-started thirteen other nonprofits, including SCHOLARMATCH, dedicated to making college accessible to low-income students, and VOICE OF WITNESS, a series of books that illuminate human rights crises through oral history. He is also the founder of McSWEENEY’S, the Mission-based publishing company.
HEAD OF OPERATIONS
Gabriel Penfield
Gabriel Penfield served as the Lab Manager fabricator for Sculpture, Ceramics, and Art and Technology at the San Francisco Art Institute from 2007-2020, and is the Founder and Lead Designer at Penfield Design Group. He has spearheaded installations for major exhibitions and managed capital improvement initiatives, and has two decades of experience in building and studio management, specializing in educational environments, art, and residential projects. His creative practice focuses on small run production tableware, specializing in formulating, creating, and testing all of the glazes and clays that are used in his production.
HEAD OF DEVELOPMENT
Rebecca Teague
Rebecca Teague was born in Washington, DC, raised in Chicago, and has called the Bay Area home for nearly 30 years. An artist trained at the San Francisco Art Institute and the Academy of Art University, she brings that perspective to her career as a nonprofit development leader. With over 15 years of experience in fundraising, donor engagement, and program planning, Rebecca has championed artists and organizations that make the Bay Area’s cultural community so vital. Her dual perspective as artist and advocate makes development work deeply meaningful, and fuels her commitment to supporting artists and strengthening the entire arts ecosystem.
HEAD OF STUDIOS
Sherry Knutson
Sherry Knutson is a Northern California multidisciplinary artist and educator with over 20 years of experience in painting, embroidery, and textile design. At San Francisco Art Institute, she served as Director of BFA Studios, developed the International Summer Residency Program, and contributed to institutional growth through exhibition curation and committee leadership. In 2020, she founded More Love, Love More, an initiative combining art with social consciousness using recycled materials and hand-embroidered designs. Her humanitarian-focused practice emphasizes community building, environmental awareness, and fostering dialogue through creative expression and collaborative engagement.
HEAD OF FACULTY
Ana Teresa Fernandez
Ana Teresa Fernández speaks five languages and creates "Magical Non-fiction" through performance, video, photography, painting, and sculpture. Born in Tampico, Mexico, and based in San Francisco, she explores borders, identity, and climate through time-based actions and social gestures. Her work includes erasing the Tijuana-San Diego border by painting it sky blue while wearing a tango dress. Featured at major venues including the 2022 Armory Show, her work is held in collections at institutions like the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Denver Art Museum, and Blanton Museum of Art.
CREATIVE DIRECTION
Jennifer Morla
Jennifer Morla founded Morla Design in 1984, creating witty and elegant work spanning motion graphics, branding, retail environments, and textiles. She has received graphic design's highest honors: the AIGA Medal and Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Award. Her work appears in major museum collections including MOMA, LACMA, and the Smithsonian, with SFMOMA acquiring over 50 pieces. Notable clients include Levi Strauss, MTV, Apple, and Stanford University. She lectures internationally and taught senior level design at California College of the Arts for over 20 years.
HEAD OF OPEN EDUCATION
Wendy MacNaughton
Wendy MacNaughton is an artist, graphic journalist, and educator who believes drawing creates human connection. She's author-illustrator of How to Say Goodbye and Meanwhile in San Francisco, and collaborated on bestsellers like Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. As a visual columnist, she traveled America chronicling overlooked stories. MacNaughton created DrawTogether, a pandemic-born drawing series now serving 300,000+ learners globally. Her guerrilla art project DrawTogether Strangers encourages random passersby to draw each other's portraits, demonstrating her core belief that genuine connection sparks through truly seeing one another. She lives in Oakland.
WEB WIZARD
Andy Shimmin
Andy is a designer and creative specializing in alternative, novel, and experimental interfaces. He’s previously designed for autonomous vehicles at Ford Motor Company, smart home fitness machines at fuseproject, and Webex devices at Cisco, among others. Andy’s design process is driven by playfulness, craftsmanship, and a sense of wonder, qualities that he strives to embody in both his work and himself. When he's not designing, he creates sculptural and functional ceramic works, often gifting them to friends who didn't ask for them.
JACKS OF ALL TRADES
Jacksaline Perez
Jacksaline is a creative healer whose work lives at the intersection of memory, emotion, and transformation. Moving between writing, photography, and painting, she gathers fragments of feeling and experience, shaping them into vessels of expression and restoration. A recent graduate of San Francisco State University and an ambassador of the Guardian Scholars Program, Jacksaline carries a deep awareness of the power of voice — especially when it rises from silence. Her art is an offering: a soft rebellion, a mirror, a place to land. As she steps into her artistic journey, she moves with intention — led by intuition, shaped by resilience, and grounded in the belief that beauty is a form of resistance and healing.
HEAD OF DAZZLE
Kristin Farr
Kristin Farr is an artist and has served as a curator, journalist and producer for KQED, Juxtapoz Magazine and Facebook’s original artist-in-residence program. She has created public art installations locally and internationally, and founded the Emmy-winning educational film series, KQED Art School. Her work is directed by color psychology and folk-art practices. She is intuitively connected to color due to her lifelong experience with synesthesia. Kristin has painted large-scale murals internationally and locally since 2014, and has made objects of all forms since childhood, mostly focused on painting, sculpture, and video art.
CO-FOUNDER
Dave Eggers
In 2002, with a small budget and a few friends, author and artist DAVE EGGERS cofounded 826 Valencia, the beloved Mission District writing and tutoring center. Now celebrating its twenty-third year in San Francisco, the center now has locations all over the city, with major hubs in the Mission, the Tenderloin, and Mission Bay. Eggers has also jump-started thirteen other nonprofits, including SCHOLARMATCH, dedicated to making college accessible to low-income students, and VOICE OF WITNESS, a series of books that illuminate human rights crises through oral history. He is also the founder of McSWEENEY’S, the Mission-based publishing company.
CO-FOUNDER & CO-EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
JD Beltran
A native San Franciscan who grew up in the Richmond District, JD BELTRAN founded and directs the Center for Creative Sustainability in San Francisco, fostering sustainability for artists and the environment. Beltran has been a creative infrastruralist and arts cheerleader who, for more than twenty years, has advanced groundbreaking solutions and organizational initiatives that address cultural, social, environmental, and economic challenges. An award-winning artist, filmmaker, designer, writer, journalist, educator, and master in the use of the serial comma, Beltran has served as a longtime faculty in art, design, and technology at the San Francisco Art Institute (her alma mater), CCA, SFSU, and Stanford.
CONSULTING CO-EXECUTIVE
DIRECTOR & CHIEF CURATOR
Rene deGuzman
René de Guzman is a longtime Bay Area curator, artist, and arts consultant. He was one of the founding curators at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts as Visual Arts Curator and Director of Visual Art, serving from 1993 - 2007, and subsequently served as the Senior Curator of Art and then Director of Exhibition Strategy at the Oakland Museum of California, from 2007 to 2021. He also served as the Deputy Director for Programs and Engagement at the Headlands Center for the Arts, overseeing artist residencies and public programs. For over three decades, he has developed innovative and groundbreaking exhibitions that draw wide public engagement.
HEAD OF DEVELOPMENT
Rebecca Teague
Rebecca Teague was born in Washington, DC, raised in Chicago, and has called the Bay Area home for nearly 30 years. An artist trained at the San Francisco Art Institute and the Academy of Art University, she brings that perspective to her career as a nonprofit development leader. With over 15 years of experience in fundraising, donor engagement, and program planning, Rebecca has championed artists and organizations that make the Bay Area’s cultural community so vital. Her dual perspective as artist and advocate makes development work deeply meaningful, and fuels her commitment to supporting artists and strengthening the entire arts ecosystem.
HEAD OF STUDIOS
Sherry Knutson
Sherry Knutson is a Northern California multidisciplinary artist and educator with over 20 years of experience in painting, embroidery, and textile design. At San Francisco Art Institute, she served as Director of BFA Studios, developed the International Summer Residency Program, and contributed to institutional growth through exhibition curation and committee leadership. In 2020, she founded More Love, Love More, an initiative combining art with social consciousness using recycled materials and hand-embroidered designs. Her humanitarian-focused practice emphasizes community building, environmental awareness, and fostering dialogue through creative expression and collaborative engagement.
HEAD OF OPERATIONS
Gabriel Penfield
Gabriel Penfield served as the Lab Manager fabricator for Sculpture, Ceramics, and Art and Technology at the San Francisco Art Institute from 2007-2020, and is the Founder and Lead Designer at Penfield Design Group. He has spearheaded installations for major exhibitions and managed capital improvement initiatives, and has two decades of experience in building and studio management, specializing in educational environments, art, and residential projects. His creative practice focuses on small run production tableware, specializing in formulating, creating, and testing all of the glazes and clays that are used in his production.
HEAD OF FACULTY
Ana Teresa Fernandez
Ana Teresa Fernández speaks five languages and creates "Magical Non-fiction" through performance, video, photography, painting, and sculpture. Born in Tampico, Mexico, and based in San Francisco, she explores borders, identity, and climate through time-based actions and social gestures. Her work includes erasing the Tijuana-San Diego border by painting it sky blue while wearing a tango dress. Featured at major venues including the 2022 Armory Show, her work is held in collections at institutions like the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Denver Art Museum, and Blanton Museum of Art.
CREATIVE DIRECTION
Jennifer Morla
Jennifer Morla founded Morla Design in 1984, creating witty and elegant work spanning motion graphics, branding, retail environments, and textiles. She has received graphic design's highest honors: the AIGA Medal and Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Award. Her work appears in major museum collections including MOMA, LACMA, and the Smithsonian, with SFMOMA acquiring over 50 pieces. Notable clients include Levi Strauss, MTV, Apple, and Stanford University. She lectures internationally and taught senior level design at California College of the Arts for over 20 years.
HEAD OF OPEN EDUCATION
Wendy MacNaughton
Wendy MacNaughton is an artist, graphic journalist, and educator who believes drawing creates human connection. She's author-illustrator of How to Say Goodbye and Meanwhile in San Francisco, and collaborated on bestsellers like Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. As a visual columnist, she traveled America chronicling overlooked stories. MacNaughton created DrawTogether, a pandemic-born drawing series now serving 300,000+ learners globally. Her guerrilla art project DrawTogether Strangers encourages random passersby to draw each other's portraits, demonstrating her core belief that genuine connection sparks through truly seeing one another. She lives in Oakland.
WEB WIZARD
Andy Shimmin
TBD
JACKS OF ALL TRADES
Jacksaline Perez
Jacksaline is a creative healer whose work lives at the intersection of memory, emotion, and transformation. Moving between writing, photography, and painting, she gathers fragments of feeling and experience, shaping them into vessels of expression and restoration. A recent graduate of San Francisco State University and an ambassador of the Guardian Scholars Program, Jacksaline carries a deep awareness of the power of voice — especially when it rises from silence. Her art is an offering: a soft rebellion, a mirror, a place to land. As she steps into her artistic journey, she moves with intention — led by intuition, shaped by resilience, and grounded in the belief that beauty is a form of resistance and healing.
HEAD OF DAZZLE
Kristin Farr
Kristin Farr is an artist and has served as a curator, journalist and producer for KQED, Juxtapoz Magazine and Facebook’s original artist-in-residence program. She has created public art installations locally and internationally, and founded the Emmy-winning educational film series, KQED Art School. Her work is directed by color psychology and folk-art practices. She is intuitively connected to color due to her lifelong experience with synesthesia. Kristin has painted large-scale murals internationally and locally since 2014, and has made objects of all forms since childhood, mostly focused on painting, sculpture, and video art.
Rebecca Teague
Rebecca Teague was born in Washington, DC, raised in Chicago, and has called the Bay Area home for nearly 30 years. An artist trained at the San Francisco Art Institute and the Academy of Art University, she brings that perspective to her career as a nonprofit development leader. With over 15 years of experience in fundraising, donor engagement, and program planning, Rebecca has championed artists and organizations that make the Bay Area’s cultural community so vital. Her dual perspective as artist and advocate makes development work deeply meaningful, and fuels her commitment to supporting artists and strengthening the entire arts ecosystem.
Sherry Knutson
Sherry Knutson is a Northern California multidisciplinary artist and educator with over 20 years of experience in painting, embroidery, and textile design. At the San Francisco Art Institute, she served as Director of BFA Studios, developed the International Summer Residency Program, and contributed to institutional growth through exhibition curation and committee leadership. In 2020, she founded More Love, Love More, an initiative combining art with social consciousness using recycled materials and hand-embroidered designs. Her humanitarian-focused practice emphasizes community building, environmental awareness, and fostering dialogue through creative expression and collaborative engagement.
Gabriel Penfield
Gabriel Penfield served as the Lab Manager fabricator for Sculpture, Ceramics, and Art and Technology at the San Francisco Art Institute from 2007-2020, and is the Founder and Lead Designer at Penfield Design Group. He has spearheaded installations for major exhibitions and managed capital improvement initiatives, and has two decades of experience in building and studio management, specializing in educational environments, art, and residential projects. His creative practice focuses on small run production tableware, specializing in formulating, creating, and testing all of the glazes and clays that are used in his production.
Ana Teresa Fernández
Ana Teresa Fernández speaks five languages and creates "Magical Non-fiction" through performance, video, photography, painting, and sculpture. Born in Tampico, Mexico, and based in San Francisco, she explores borders, identity, and climate through time-based actions and social gestures. Her work includes erasing the Tijuana-San Diego border by painting it sky blue while wearing a tango dress. Featured at major venues including the 2022 Armory Show, her work is held in collections at institutions like the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Denver Art Museum, and Blanton Museum of Art.
Jennifer Morla
Jennifer Morla founded Morla Design in 1984, creating witty and elegant work spanning motion graphics, branding, retail environments, and textiles. She has received graphic design's highest honors: the AIGA Medal and Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Award. Her work appears in major museum collections including MOMA, LACMA, and the Smithsonian, with SFMOMA acquiring over 50 pieces. Notable clients include Levi Strauss, MTV, Apple, and Stanford University. She lectures internationally and taught senior level design at California College of the Arts for over 20 years.
Wendy MacNaughton
Wendy MacNaughton is an artist, graphic journalist, and educator who believes drawing creates human connection. She's author-illustrator of How to Say Goodbye and Meanwhile in San Francisco, and collaborated on bestsellers like Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. As a visual columnist, she traveled America chronicling overlooked stories. MacNaughton created DrawTogether, a pandemic-born drawing series now serving 300,000+ learners globally. Also trained as a social worker, her guerrilla art project DrawTogether Strangers encourages random passersby to draw each other's portraits, demonstrating her core belief that genuine connection sparks through truly seeing one another.
Andy Shimmin
Andy is a designer and creative specializing in alternative, novel, and experimental interfaces. His work has been shown at the Denver Art Museum and Carnegie Hall. He's previously been part of Ford Motor Company's design team for autonomous vehicle interfaces and driver experiences, the Webex collaboration team at Cisco, and held various roles at startups around San Francisco. Andy’s design process is driven by playfulness, craftsmanship, and a sense of wonder, qualities that he strives to embody in both his work and himself. When he's not designing, he creates sculptural and functional ceramic works, often gifting them to friends who didn't ask for them.
Jacksaline Perez
Jacksaline [aka "Jacks"] is a creative healer whose work lives at the intersection of memory, emotion, and transformation. Moving between writing, photography, and painting, she gathers fragments of feeling and experience, shaping them into vessels of expression and restoration. A recent SFSU graduate and Guardian Scholars Program ambassador, she carries a deep awareness of the power of voice—especially when it rises from silence. Her art is an offering: a soft rebellion, a mirror, a place to land. She moves with intention—led by intuition, shaped by resilience, and grounded in the belief that beauty is a form of resistance and healing.
Kristin Farr
Kristin Farr is an artist and has served as a curator, journalist and producer for KQED, Juxtapoz Magazine and Facebook’s original artist-in-residence program. She has created public art installations locally and internationally, and founded the Emmy-winning educational film series, KQED Art School. Her work is directed by color psychology and folk-art practices. She is intuitively connected to color due to her lifelong experience with synesthesia. Kristin has painted large-scale murals internationally and locally since 2014, and has made objects of all forms since childhood, mostly focused on painting, sculpture, and video art.
ART + WATER FACULTY
Meet the first cohort of artists who will fill Pier 29 with color.
Ana Teresa Fernandez. JD Beltran. Taraneh Hemani. Paul Madonna. Jet Marinez. Travis Somerville. David Wilson. Jenifer Wofford. George McCalman.
These nine visual artists will be given free studio space through Art + Water, in exchange for mentoring 20 emerging artists.
These emerging artists will be chosen from an application process open to all San Francisco residents of all ages.
We are thrilled to have assembled this astonishing array of some of the Bay Area’s best visual minds...
Ana Teresa Fernandez
Ana Teresa Fernández creates "Magical Non-fiction"—transforming unimaginable realities into dreamscapes of possibility. Born in Tampico, Mexico, and based in San Francisco, she uses performance, video, photography, painting, and sculpture to explore borders, identity, and climate through time-based actions and social gestures.
Her border erasure work includes painting portions of the Tijuana-San Diego wall sky blue while wearing a tango dress, creating the illusion of openings. Major projects include On The Horizon for the 2021 Lands End exhibition. Featured as a solo booth at the 2022 Armory Show, her work resides in prestigious collections including the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Denver Art Museum, and Blanton Museum of Art, among others.
Paul Madonna
Paul Madonna is an award-winning artist and best-selling author whose unique blend of drawing and storytelling has been called an "all new art form." Creator of the San Francisco Chronicle series "All Over Coffee" (12 years) and author of seven books including the Emit Hopper Mystery Series, his work has earned multiple honors including the 2011 NCBA Award. His art spans novels, cartoons, and public murals, appearing internationally in galleries, museums, and publications. A Carnegie Mellon BFA graduate and MAD magazine's first Art Intern, he co-founded therumpus.net and teaches creative practice.
David Wilson
David Wilson is an artist based in Oakland, CA. He creates observational drawings based in direct experiences with landscape and orchestrates site-based gatherings that draw together a wide net of artists, performers, filmmakers, chefs, and artisans into collaborative relationships. He organized the experimental exhibition The Possible at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and received the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's 2012 SECA Art Award. He has exhibited his work with SFMOMA, was included in the 2010 CA Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, had a solo MATRIX exhibition at BAMPFA, was the inaugural artist in residence at 500 Capp St, and has received grants for the Andy Warhol Foundation, and most recently the Svane Family Foundation."
JD Beltran
JD Beltran is an award-winning artist and filmmaker whose work has been exhibited internationally including at the Walker Art Center, San Francisco MOMA, Ars Electronica,The Getty Institute, and the MIT Media Lab. Her art+technology work has earned recognition as one of the top Public Artworks in the U.S. by Public Art Network, and one of the top art + technology artworks in the world by the NTAA. She also has won a CES Innovation Award, and been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, and Wired and her pieces are held in museums and private collections worldwide. She's received grants from Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation, Artadia, and Skowegan. A longtime educator at the San Francisco Art Institute, Stanford, SFSU, and other institutions, Beltran has served on the San Francisco Arts Commission since 2009. Mayor London Breed declared December 3, 2018 "JD Beltran Day in San Francisco."
Jet Martinez
Oakland-based artist Jet Martinez creates vibrant public art that blends Mexican folk traditions with contemporary aesthetics. Born in Tuxpan, Veracruz and raised in Cuernavaca, he draws inspiration from pottery, weaving, and embroidery to enliven urban architecture with ornate patterns. A San Francisco Art Institute BFA graduate, Martinez directed the Clarion Alley Mural Project for nearly a decade. His work has been exhibited at institutions including MACLA and SomArts, with murals commissioned by Facebook, Red Bull, and SF General Hospital. He lives in Oakland with his wife and two children.
Jenifer Wofford
Jenifer K Wofford is a San Francisco artist and educator whose work explores hybridity, history, and calamity. She's one-third of the Filipina-American artist trio MOB and has exhibited at major venues including SFMOMA, Asian Art Museum, YBCA, and internationally at Asia Society, Wing Luke Museum, and Silverlens Gallery.A 2025 Artadia Awardee and 2017 Joan Mitchell Foundation grant recipient, Wofford has earned recognition through the YBCA 100 list, Eureka Fellowship, and grants from Art Matters and San Francisco Arts Commission. She has completed residencies in Italy, Norway, and California. Wofford teaches at University of San Francisco and has instructed at Stanford, UC Berkeley, and other institutions. Born in San Francisco and raised internationally, she holds degrees from SFAI (BFA) and UC Berkeley (MFA). She's currently developing three major California public art commissions.
Taraneh Hemami
Raised in Tehran and based in the Bay Area for over forty years, Taraneh Hemami explores displacement, preservation and representation through public, collective and curatorial projects. Her works incorporate materials of history, organizing images, data and information into patterns, colors and maps manifesting as installations, public art and publications. Hemami has received numerous awards including Creative Capital, Kala Fellowship, and SFAC Individual Artist Awards. Her works have been exhibited internationally at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Pergamon Museum (Berlin), and Sharjah Art Museum, and are collected by the Victoria and Albert Museum and British Museum. She is Associate Professor at California College of the Arts and founder of Makaan Residency, a communal production hub for CWANA artists.
Travis Somerville
Born in Atlanta and raised throughout the American South, Travis Somerville studied at Maryland Institute College of Art before settling in San Francisco, where he attended the San Francisco Art Institute. His large-scale oil paintings on paper incorporate collage elements and feature political and cultural icons from Southern history. Somerville's work examines the complexities of racism and provides a foundation for discussing American oppression and colonial attitudes globally. His art has been exhibited at prestigious institutions including the Smithsonian Institution, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Walker Art Center, Birmingham Museum of Art, and Centro de Arte Contemporaneo de Malaga, among many others. His work is on the collection of SFMOMA as well as the DeYoung.
George McCalman
George McCalman is an artist, creative director and Co-Principal of McCalman.Co. Educated as a fine art painter with a focus on philosophy, McCalman defines himself as an artist and creative director. In practice, that means he illustrates, designs, and writes about the complex concepts he explores in his work. His background in the editorial world is a foundation of his storytelling, and his fine art practice has reframed his perspective on the importance of design. A culture columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, McCalman’s first book Illustrated Black History: Honoring the Iconic and the Unseen won the 2023 NAACP Award for Outstanding Literary Work as well as profound accolades by The New Yorker’s Hilton Als, NPR, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Fast Company and many others.
Ana Teresa Fernández
Born in Tampico, Mexico, Fernandez grew up in California and lives in San Francisco. She characterizes her work as "Magical Non-fiction"—transforming unimaginable realities into dreamscapes. She has created public artwork internationally in Haiti, Brazil, South Africa, Cuba, and Mexico. Notable projects include On The Horizon (2021 Lands End exhibition) and painting the Tijuana-San Diego border wall sky blue while wearing a tango dress, creating an illusion of a hole in the wall. Her work was featured at the 2022 Armory Show and is in permanent collections that include the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Indianapolis Museum of Art, and Blanton Museum of Art.
JD Beltran
JD Beltran is an award-winning artist and filmmaker whose work has been exhibited internationally including at the Walker Art Center, San Francisco MOMA, Ars Electronica,The Getty Institute, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, and the MIT Media Lab. Her art+technology work has earned recognition as one of the top Public Artworks in the U.S. by Public Art Network, and one of the top art + technology artworks worldwide by the NTAA. She also has won a CES Innovation Award, and been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, and Wired, and her pieces are held in museums and private collections worldwide. She's received commissions, grants, and residencies from the Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation, Artadia, Skowegan, the M.H. De Young Museum, Montalvo, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Global Art Lab (RU & KGZ) and The Workshop Residence. A longtime educator at the San Francisco Art Institute, Stanford, SFSU, and other institutions, Beltran has served on the San Francisco Arts Commission since 2009. Mayor London Breed declared December 3, 2018 "JD Beltran Day in San Francisco.
Taraneh Hemami
Raised in Tehran and based in the Bay Area for over 40 years, Taraneh Hemami explores displacement, preservation and representation through public and curatorial projects. Her works incorporate historical materials, organizing images and data into patterns and maps as installations, public art, and publications. Hemami's numerous awards include a Creative Capital grant and San Francisco Arts Commission Artist Award. Her works have been exhibited internationally at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Pergamon Museum, and Sharjah Art Museum, and are in the Victoria and Albert Museum and British Museum collections. She is Associate Professor at California College of the Arts and founder of the Makaan Residency.
Paul Madonna
Paul Madonna is an award-winning artist and best-selling author whose unique blend of drawing and storytelling has been called an "all new art form." Creator of the San Francisco Chronicle series All Over Coffee (12 years) and author of seven books including the Emit Hopper Mystery Series, his work has earned multiple honors including the 2011 NCBA Award. His art spans novels, cartoons, and public murals, appearing internationally in galleries, museums, and publications. A Carnegie Mellon BFA graduate and MAD Magazine's first art intern, he co-founded therumpus.net and teaches creative practice.
Jet Martinez
Oakland-based artist Jet Martinez creates vibrant public art that blends Mexican folk traditions with contemporary aesthetics. Born in Tuxpan, Veracruz and raised in Cuernavaca, he draws inspiration from pottery, weaving, and embroidery to enliven urban architecture with ornate patterns. A San Francisco Art Institute BFA graduate, Martinez directed the Clarion Alley Mural Project for nearly a decade. His work has been exhibited at institutions including MACLA and SomArts, with murals commissioned by Facebook, Red Bull, and SF General Hospital. He lives in Oakland with his wife and two children.
Travis Somerville
Born in Atlanta and raised in the American South, Travis Somerville studied at Maryland Institute College of Art before settling in San Francisco, where he attended the San Francisco Art Institute. His large-scale oil paintings on paper incorporate collage elements and feature political and cultural icons from Southern history. Somerville's work examines the complexities of racism and provides a foundation for discussing American oppression and colonial attitudes globally. His art has been exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Walker Art Center, and Birmingham Museum of Art. His work is in the collections of the SFMOMA and the DeYoung Museum.
David Wilson
David Wilson is an Oakland-based artist who creates observational drawings from direct landscape experiences and orchestrates site-based gatherings that bring together a wide range of artists, performers, filmmakers, chefs, and artisans into collaborative relationships. He organized the experimental exhibition The Possible at BAMPFA and received SFMOMA's 2012 SECA Art Award. His work has been exhibited at the SFMOMA and the 2010 CA Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, and he had a solo MATRIX exhibition at the BAMPFA. He was the inaugural artist in residence at 500 Capp St and has received grants from the Andy Warhol Foundation and the Svane Family Foundation.
Jenifer Wofford
Jenifer K Wofford is a San Francisco artist and educator whose work explores hybridity, history, and calamity. She is one-third of the Filipina-American artist trio MOB. Wofford has exhibited at the SFMOMA, Asian Art Museum, YBCA, and Silverlens Galleries. A 2025 Artadia Awardee and 2017 Joan Mitchell Foundation grant recipient, she has earned recognition through the YBCA 100 list, a Eureka Fellowship, and grants from Art Matters and the SFAC. Wofford teaches at the University of San Francisco. Born in San Francisco and raised internationally, she holds degrees from SFAI (BFA) and UC Berkeley (MFA). She's currently developing three major California public art commissions.
George McCalman
George McCalman is an artist, author, and creative director based in San Francisco and founder of the creative agency McCalman.Co. With a background in editorial storytelling and fine art, his work bridges design, narrative, and visual art. His Observed and First Person columns for the San Francisco Chronicle document Bay Area culture. His book Illustrated Black History: Honoring the Iconic and Unseen (Sept 2022) received acclaim and won the 2023 NAACP Award for Outstanding Literary Work. He recently received the James Beard Award for the MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award 2025.
VISITING ARTISTS + CURATORS
We’ve assembled what we think is a truly stunning list of visiting artists and curators, all of whom believe in our model and have agreed to visit Art + Water in our first year or so.
These visiting artists might come for an hour to share their expertise with our emerging artists. They might teach, then give a public talk. They might hold a large-scale public demonstration open to all.
Tanya Zimbardo
Tanya Zimbardo is San Francisco-based curator and writer. Over the past decade, she has organized exhibitions and screenings for a range of Bay Area nonprofit organizations including di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, Mills College Art Museum, San Francisco Cinematheque, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Lena Wolff
Lena Wolff is a San Francisco Bay Area artist, craftswoman, and democracy activist whose work spans folk art, minimalism, and political expression through drawing, sculpture, and public projects. She founded Art for Democracy in 2017, creating national voter participation campaigns. Her work is collected by major institutions including SFMOMA and Berkeley Art Museum.
Griff Williams
Griff Williams is an American painter, publisher, art instructor, filmmaker, and gallerist who owns Gallery 16. His paintings have been exhibited worldwide at major museums including San Diego Museum of Art, Orange County Museum of Art, and San Jose Museum of Art, with reviews in Art in America and Frieze.
Chris Ware
Chris Ware (b. 1967, Omaha) is a master comic artist known for New Yorker covers and complex graphic novels about suburban Midwestern life. His stories explore memory and identity through characters like Jimmy Corrigan and Rusty Brown, often serialized in publications before becoming standalone books through his Acme Novelty Library.
Catherine Wagner
Catherine Wagner is a conceptual artist working in sculpture, installation and photographer who has received the Rome Prize, the Guggenheim Fellowship, NEA Fellowships, and the Ferguson Award. Time Magazine named her one of the Fine Arts Innovators of the Year, and her work is in the collections of MOMA, the Whitney Museum, LACMA, and SFMOMA. She is Emeritus Professor of Studio Art at Mills College at Northeastern University.
Sarah Vowell
Sarah Vowell is the author of seven nonfiction books, including Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, Unfamiliar Fishes, The Wordy Shipmates, and Assassination Vacation. She was a contributing editor for This American Life from 1996 to 2008 and has worked for the New York Times, Salon, Time, Spin, and GQ.
Isaac Vasquez Avila
Isaac Vazquez Avila, born in Mexico City, is a San Francisco-based painter and sculptor. He holds a BA in Latino/a Studies from SFSU and MFA from UC Berkeley (2016). Avila runs Avila Mio Studio, creating murals and custom installations. His work has been exhibited at Berkeley Art Museum, Guerrero Gallery, and other venues.
Adrian Tomine
Adrian Tomine is a bestselling author, screenwriter, and New Yorker cover artist. His award-winning graphic novels include Summer Blonde, Shortcomings and Killing and Dying, which was named one of NPR’s Best Books of the Year. In 2023, Shortcomings was adapted to film by director Randall Park, from a screenplay by Tomine. His short stories were also adapted into the 2021 French film Paris, 13th District.
Sarah Thornton
Sarah Thornton is a sociologist who writes about art, design and people. Author of four critically acclaimed books including international bestseller *Seven Days in the Art World*, she's known as "the Jane Goodall of the art world." Her latest book *Tits Up* explores mammary glands' universal truths and cultural meanings.
Sunra Thompson
Sunra Thompson is a designer and art director at McSweeney’s. Under his helm, the McSweeney's Quarterly has been a finalist for multiple National Magazine Awards in Design, as well as for the Best Illustrated Cover. He lives in Berkeley, California.
Steve Thompson
Steve Thompson, raised in rural Southern California, has worked in fabrication since age eight, learning welding and metalwork from his grandfather. After studying physics and philosophy at UC Irvine, he designed dwellings on a West Marin farm and founded Stochastic Labs' fabrication shop. Over the years he has worked with numerous artists, designers, and institutions to turn abstract concepts into meaningful, tangible works. He built and now runs Peak Design’s prototyping lab.
Chinzalée Sonami
Chinzalée Sonami runs PALA, a ceramics practice based in her hometown of Oakland. Named "PALA" (Tibetan for "father") after her late Tibetan potter father, she views her work as a time wormhole where father and daughter occupy the same creative space through clay, continuing his artistic legacy.
Jessica Silverman
Jessica Silverman founded her internationally renowned contemporary art gallery in 2008. With an MA in Curatorial Practice from California College of the Arts, she builds artists' careers and supports collectors. Gallery artists' works are acquired by major museums including MoMA, Tate, and SFMOMA. She regularly shows at Art Basel.
David Shrigley
British artist David Shrigley (b. 1968, Macclesfield) is known for distinctive drawings and satirical commentary on everyday life. His deadpan humor captures overheard conversations and compulsive observations. Working across sculpture, installation, animation, and music, he seeks wider audiences beyond galleries through publications and collaborations.
Frank Smigiel
Frank Smigiel is a visual arts curator, educator, and writer serving as Director of Arts Programming & Partnerships at Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture in San Francisco. Former Associate Curator at SFMOMA, he has collaborated with diverse artists and focuses on theater/time-based art intersections, artist commerce, and queer histories.
Dr. Scott D. Sampson
Scott D. Sampson is a Canadian-American paleontologist and science communicator, currently Executive Director of California Academy of Sciences. Previously Vice President of Research & Collections and Chief Curator at Denver Museum of Nature & Science, he's also known for hosting the PBS Kids show Dinosaur Train.
Ted Russell
Ted Russell led arts strategy at Kenneth Rainin Foundation and served as Senior Program Officer at James Irvine Foundation (2005-2016). He holds a BA from Yale and MBA from UCLA Anderson. He's a Nasher Haemisegger Fellow at SMU DataArts and served as board chair of Grantmakers in the Arts (2020-2021).
Leah Rosenberg
Leah Rosenberg works across artistic media to spark new experiences of color. Using painting, installation, printmaking, sculpture, performance, and video she invites viewers to consider how color can be perceived both multi-sensorially and multi-dimensionally. By creating such enriched encounters, her work strives to deepen our understanding of the emotional and psychological impact of color in everyday life.
Kim Stanley Robinson
Kim Stanley Robinson is an acclaimed American science fiction author, best known for his Mars trilogy. A multiple award winner—including Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards—The New Yorker recognizes him as "one of the greatest living science-fiction writers." His work has profoundly shaped contemporary science fiction literature.
Larry Rinder
Lawrence Rinder directed UC Berkeley's Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (2008-2020). Previously, he was Founding Director of the Wattis Institute, Dean at California College of the Arts, and Curator of Contemporary at the Whitney Museum. He also writes art criticism, poetry, drama, and fiction.
Boots Riley
Boots" Riley is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, rapper, and communist activist.He is the lead vocalist of The Coup and Street Sweeper Social Club. He made his feature-film directorial debut with Sorry to Bother You, which he also wrote. In 2023, the television show I'm a Virgo premiered, which he wrote and directed. Riley is teaming with NEON for I Love Boosters, his latest film, which will star Keke Palmer and Demi Moore.
Rigo23
Rigo 23 is a Portuguese-born visual artist and sculptor. He is known in the San Francisco community for having painted a number of large, graphic "sign" murals including: One Tree next to the U.S. Route 101 on-ramp at 10th and Bryant Street, Innercity Home on a large public housing structure, Sky/Ground on a tall abandoned building at 3rd and Mission Street, and Extinct over a Shell gas station. Rigo earned his BFA degree from the San Francisco Art Institute, and an MFA degree from Stanford University.
Renny Pritiken
Renny Pritikin is a San Francisco Bay Area curator, art writer, and poet. He has served as chief curator at New Langton Arts, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, The Nelson Gallery at UC Davis, and the Contemporary Jewish Museum. Pritikin has authored five poetry books and a memoir.
Nicholas Price
Nicholas Price works as Master Printer at Magnolia Editions in Oakland, California. An alum of the San Francisco Art Institute, he also served as a Studio Artist at Root Division (2012-2014) before returning in 2016 to pilot their Alumni Studio Artist Program.
Woody De Othello
Woody De Othello, based in Oakland, California, transforms everyday objects—clocks, phones, fans—into clay and bronze vessels of psychic significance, drawing from African nkisi traditions. His sculptures and two-dimensional works create surrealistic distortions of scale and time, making the familiar uncanny and illegible.
Christo Oropeza
San Francisco native Christo Oropeza is a "cultural worker" encompassing roles as artist, curator, gallerist, producer, and museum staffer. Recent projects include SFMOMA murals, Facebook's Artist in Residence program, and gallery exhibitions. He co-founded Incline Gallery, was named to YBCA 100, and established San Pancho Art Collective.
Yetende Olagbaju
yétúndé ọlágbajú is a Nigerian/Gullah-Geeche research-based artist, creative producer, and cultural strategist based in California. Their work explores the question: "What must we reckon with as we build a future, together?" Through sonic, sculptural, and collaborative practices, ọlágbajú examines interdependence and transformation within Black diaspora experiences, untangling possibilities emerging from collective reckonings.
Ellen Oh
Ellen is a creative producer and arts administrator with 25 years of experience across diverse organizations, and is the Director of Interdisciplinary Arts Program at Stanford University. She catalyzes programs, curates teams, and demonstrates the arts' transformative impact. Ellen serves on advisory boards for Root Division and Headlands Center for the Arts while raising two creative daughters.
Robyn O’Neil
Robyn O’Neil lives in Washington State. She mainly makes drawings. Her work was included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial, in addition to over fifty noted museums throughout the world. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, an Artadia grant, and the Hunting Prize. She wrote and art directed the film “WE, THE MASSES,” which won several awards. She also hosts the weekly podcast “ME READING STUFF.” Robyn’s work is represented by Susan Inglett Gallery, Inman Gallery, and Western Exhibitions.
Deborah Munk
As Manager of Sustainability Education Programs at Recology, Deborah Munk has supported Bay Area artists for 25 years through the Artist in Residence and Educational Tour Programs. She has expanded the AIR Program across the western region and developed educational tours engaging thousands annually, fostering creativity and conservation.
Jennifer Morla
Jennifer Morla founded Morla Design in 1984, creating acclaimed motion graphics, branding, and retail environments. She's received graphic design's highest honors: the AIGA Medal and Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Award. Her work appears in MOMA, LACMA, and Smithsonian collections, with SFMOMA acquiring over 50 pieces.
Jonathan Carver Moore
Jonathan Carver Moore is San Francisco's only openly gay Black male-owned contemporary art gallery, specializing in emerging and established BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and women artists. Committed to amplifying underrepresented voices through a Black queer lens, the gallery champions community accessibility, welcoming novice and avid collectors alike while celebrating diversity throughout the art world.
Susan Miller
Susan Miller is a seasoned arts and academic professional who has developed four interdisciplinary campus research groups at UC Berkeley since 2008, including the Berkeley Center for New Media. Previously executive director of San Francisco's New Langton Arts, she specializes in video, media arts, and Bay Area creative practice, curating exhibitions internationally.
Barry McGee
Barry McGee, a San Francisco Art Institute graduate, emerged from the Mission School movement and street art culture as "Twist." His work addresses social issues through various personas, featuring his signature droopy-eyed male figure representing empathy for the homeless. Using geometric patterns, found objects, and the "cluster method," McGee creates art examining public versus private space while advocating for marginalized communities.
Jill Manton
Nationally recognized public art leader with entrepreneurial skills and curatorial expertise. Former SF Arts Commission Director of Programs and Public Art, she authored the $50 million Treasure Island Arts Master Plan and established San Francisco's Public Art Trust. She has raised over $72.5M for art initiatives and received the Rockefeller Foundation Grant.
Michelle Mansour
Michelle Mansour is an Egyptian-American artist, educator, and curator based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has been exhibited at venues including The deYoung Museum and SFMOMA Artists Gallery. She holds an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute and has participated in residencies at Djerassi and internationally.
Amy Kurzwell
Amy Kurzweil is a New Yorker cartoonist and the author of two graphic memoirs: Flying Couch and Artificial: A Love Story, which was named a Best Book of 2023 by NPR, the New Yorker, and Kirkus. Her writing, comics and cartoons have also been published in The Verge, the New York Times Book Review, the Believer, and many other places. Amy has taught widely, in public and private school, in universities and online.
Amy Kisch
Amy Kisch is a social impact strategist and curator who founded Art+Action, Collect For Change™, and AKArt Advisory. She leverages art to inspire action and deepen public discussions around collective responsibility. A 2020 YBCA 100 Honoree with an MSW, she previously ran Sotheby's global VIP program and holds a BA from Columbia University.
Asha Kilgallen Mcgee
Asha Kilgallen McGee is a curator and communications coordinator based in the North Bay. She earned her B.A. in Art History from UC Santa Barbara in 2023, exploring how contemporary art holds memory, builds community, and speaks across disciplines. Inspired by her Bay Area roots, she collaborates with emerging and established artists.
Em Kettner
Em Kettner is a Richmond, CA-based artist and writer. Recent solo shows include exhibitions at François Ghebaly Gallery, Chapter NY, and HARPY. Her work appears in major collections including MFA Boston and has been featured in ArtForum, Art in America, and Paris Review. She's represented by François Ghebaly Gallery.
Dorka Keehn
Dorka Keehn is known for innovative public artworks including leading fundraising for The Bay Lights on San Francisco Bay Bridge. A former SF Arts Commissioner, she co-founded Sites Unseen, activating underused alleys with arts programming. She serves on various arts boards and creates acclaimed site-specific installations with collaborator Brian Goggin.
Maria Kalman
Maira Kalman has written/illustrated over 30 books for adults and children. She has been a frequent contributor to The New York Times and The New Yorker. She has created textiles for Isaac Mizrahi and Kate Spade and sets for Mark Morris. Her art has been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world. Her fine art is represented by Mary Ryan Gallery.
Spike Jonze
Spike Jonze is the versatile filmmaker behind the acclaimed films Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Where the Wild Things Are. He won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Her, which he also directed. As a producer, his credits include Michel Gondry’s Human Nature and Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York. He is also one of the creators and producers of the Jackass TV show and films. A member of the Advisory Board of 826LA, he lives in the Los Angeles area.
PJ Johnston
PJ Johnston is the former executive director of the San Francisco Film Commission and was president of the San Francisco Arts Commission for nine years. He has served on boards of various nonprofit organizations focused on arts and advocacy for women and African Americans, and is currently a board member of the African American Arts & Culture Complex.
Chris Johanson
Chris Johanson is a Los Angeles and Portland-based artist and key figure in San Francisco's Mission School post-punk movement. His diverse practice encompasses painting, drawing, sculpture, design, and music, exploring spirituality, sociology, and environmental themes through conceptually open works that encourage contemplation of everyday life experiences.
Maria Jenson
Maria Jenson is Creative and Executive Director of SOMArts, advancing innovative strategies to sustain creative communities. She has deepened the organization's commitment to racial equity through groundbreaking exhibitions and expanded public programs. A Getty Foundation Executive Leadership Institute graduate, she previously worked at SFMOMA and founded ArtPadSF.
Annice Jacoby
Annice Jacoby is recognized for innovative work in public art, literature, and visual arts. Highlights include *Street Art San Francisco: Mission Muralismo* (Abrams), Cultural Encounters for the deYoung Museum, and City of Poets for San Francisco Public Library. Her work expands art in public life, employing poetry, theater, and media to examine critical issues.
Johanna Jackson
Johanna Jackson (b. 1972, Springfield, MA) is a multidisciplinary artist creating sculptural and functional objects like vessels and household items that transcend utility to become profound art. Recent exhibitions include 12.26 Dallas and Tennis Elbow NYC. She collaborates with Chris Johanson on furniture and lives between Portland and Topanga Canyon.
Valerie Imus
Valerie Imus is a curator, writer, and artist with fifteen years of Bay Area exhibition experience. Currently Artistic Director at Southern Exposure, she has curated numerous projects including "Over the Wall" and "New New Games." She collaborates with The Citizens Laboratory and OPENrestaurant, and holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Candice Huey
Candace Huey is an interdisciplinary curator and art historian who founded re.riddle, an experimental contemporary art gallery. She has worked for Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Bonham's auction house, and various Bay Area galleries. With degrees from The Courtauld and UC Berkeley, she serves on SECA Council at SFMOMA and Northern California ArtTable Leadership Committee.
Liz Hickok
San Francisco artist Liz Hickok creates immersive artworks blending low and high technology through photography, sculpture, video, and installation. Using playful materials, she intermingles science and nature in whimsical spaces. Her recent projects incorporate augmented reality and interactive technologies, fostering personal connections and bridging the gap between artist and viewer.
John Herschend
Jonn Herschend is an interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and experimental publisher raised in a midwestern amusement park. His work explores fiction, reality, and narrative structures explaining everyday chaos. He's exhibited at Whitney Museum, Telluride Film Festival, and SFMOMA, co-founded THE THING Quarterly, and is a Fleishhacker Eureka Fellow and recipient of the SFMOMA SECA Award.
Liz Hernández
Liz Hernández creates art rooted in storytelling, using painting, sculpture, and textiles to blur the boundary between the real and the imagined. Driven by material experimentation, she studies ancestral techniques such as embroidery and repujado, reinterpreting these Mexican craft traditions to shape a visual language of her own. She has exhibited in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and Mexico City. Her work is held in the permanent collections of SFMOMA, the de Young Museum, and KADIST
Paul Henderson
Paul Henderson is a fourth-generation San Franciscan art curator, collector, and cultural strategist from Bayview-Hunter's Point. He serves on boards of the California African American Museum and ArtLikeMe, advancing equity-focused cultural initiatives. His Henderson Art Collection intentionally introduces audiences to emerging artists while challenging cultural stereotypes and expanding arts representation.
Shawn Harris
Shawn Harris is an award-winning author and illustrator. His debut, Have You Ever Seen A Flower, received a Caldecott Honor. He illustrated the Newbery Medal-winning The Eyes and the Impossible and won the Bull-Bransom Award for A Polar Bear in the Snow.
Maria Guzman Capron
Maria A. Guzmán Capron creates vibrant textile works exploring cultural hybridity and non-binary identity. Born in Milan to Colombian-Peruvian parents, later moving to Texas, the artist examines assimilation and visibility through multilayered fabric constructions. Their practice manifests the competing cultural influences that shape us, highlighting our multiple, sometimes conflicting identities.
Joyce Grimm
Joyce Grimm was Chief Curator at Adobe's Festival of the Impossible and Founder of Triple Base Gallery. She annually reinvents interactive exhibitions by showcasing thought-provoking artworks with cutting-edge technology, including virtual and augmented reality experiences and sensory-enhancing art installations that push the boundaries of traditional gallery experiences.
Andrew Sean Greer
Greer is an American novelist and short story writer who received the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel *Less*. Author of six works of fiction including *The Story of a Marriage* and *The Confessions of Max Tivoli*, he has taught at Iowa Writers' Workshop and been an NEA Fellow and National Book Award judge.
Ted Gioia
Ted Gioia is a San Francisco-based writer and arts leader serving as Program & Development Director at Arion Press. His essays have appeared in The New Republic, New York Magazine, and VQR. His debut fiction will be published by First Bite Press in 2025, and he's currently writing a novel.
Rudolf Frieling
Rudolf Frieling, SFMOMA's Curator of Media Arts since 2006, organized major exhibitions including The Art of Participation (2008), Bruce Conner: It's All True (2016), the Nam June Paik retrospective (2021), and What Matters (2023-2024). He taught at California College of the Arts and San Francisco Art Institute.
Tammy Fortin
Tammy Fortin is a writer and musician who has worked at four art museums, incorporating visual culture into her writing. She established a writing residency at the Broad Art Museum in 2012 and has written for various publications. She recently finished a novel and plays guitar in the band Excuses for Skipping.
Kristin Farr
Kristin Farr is an artist and has served as a curator, journalist and producer for KQED, Juxtapoz Magazine and Facebook’s original artist-in-residence program. She has created public art installations locally and internationally, and founded the Emmy-winning educational film series, KQED Art School.
Marcel Dzama
Since 1998, Marcel Dzama has been represented by David Zwirner, exhibiting widely internationally. Drawing from folk vernacular and art-historical influences, his work visualizes childhood fantasies and otherworldly fairy tales. His works are held in major collections including MoMA, Guggenheim, Centre Pompidou, and Tate.
Christine Duval
Christine Duval is a visionary art curator with over twenty years of experience creating groundbreaking contemporary exhibitions globally. Specializing in multimedia and digital works, she's organized 100+ exhibitions across Europe and the US. Former Executive Director of LIMN ART GALLERY and Senior Curator at DEPICT, she champions technology-driven art.
Christopher Duncan
Christopher Robin Duncan is an Oakland-based multidisciplinary artist who uses sun, moon, time, and tides as creative prompts. His sun exposure works involve draping fabrics over objects for six months to a year, creating images between painting and photography. His sonic compositions feature harmonica, tuning forks, and field recordings, while recent ceramic work includes instruments and functional pieces.
Mark Dion
Mark Dion is an internationally recognized artist who studied at Hartford Art School (BFA 1986), School of Visual Arts, and Whitney Museum's Independent Study Program. He holds honorary doctorates from University of Hartford (2002) and Wagner Free Institute (2015), plus an Honorary Fellowship from Falmouth University (2014).
Cheryl Derricote
Cheryl Derricotte is a visual artist. Her favorite medium is glass, and she also makes work on paper and textiles. Originally from Washington, DC, she lives and makes art in San Francisco, CA. Her art has been featured in the New York Times, The Guardian, The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Francisco Examiner, KQED, MerciSF and the San Francisco Business Times.
Jen Delos Reyes
Jen de los Reyes, born in Winnipeg, was shaped by the mid-90s Riot grrrl and DIY music scene. As a show organizer, zine creator, and band member, she developed foundational skills that inform her current creative practice. Her graduate work at University of Regina helped her recognize organizing as integral to her artistic work.
Catherine Clark
Catharine Clark is the founder and director of Catharine Clark Gallery, a San Francisco contemporary art gallery established in 1991. Known for building lasting artist relationships, she has expanded the gallery with initiatives like EXiT bookstore and BOXBLUR performance program. A San Francisco native with professional dance background, her art passion began through family exposure.
Abby Chen
Asian Art Museum Curator Abby Chen received the 2024 NAEA AACIG Distinguished Art Educator Award. Her experimental approach explores intersectionalities of race, sexuality, gender, nation, migration, and technology in the United States and Asia. Her award-winning exhibitions have helped reshape the narrative of contemporary Asian art, including After Hope: Videos of Resistance, Chanel Miller: I was I am I will be, Kongkee: Warring States Cyberpunk, and Into View: Bernice Bing.
Julie Chang
Julie Chang is a San Francisco-based contemporary artist with an MFA from Stanford University (2007) and degrees from Tufts and School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including venues like San Francisco Art Institute, San Jose Museum of Art, and galleries in Washington DC and Istanbul. She's represented by Hosfelt Gallery.
Jeff Chang
Jeff Chang is a writer, host, and cultural organizer specializing in culture, politics, arts, and music. His upcoming book "Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America" publishes September 2025. He hosts the Signal Award-winning podcast "Edge of Reason" and "Notes From the Edge."
Julie Casemore
Julie Casemore is a gallerist and curator who founded Casemore Gallery in San Francisco in 2015, specializing in contemporary photographic practices. Located within Minnesota Street Project, the gallery represents established artists like Larry Sultan's Estate and emerging West Coast photographers. She previously worked at Stephen Wirtz Gallery and exhibits at major international art fairs.
Thi Bui
Thi Bui is a Vietnamese-American graphic memoirist who fled Vietnam in 1978 as a refugee. Her acclaimed debut The Best We Could Do won numerous awards and made Bill Gates' top five books. She's also a Caldecott Honor winner for illustrating A Different Pond and is currently working on graphic nonfiction about immigration detention.
Demetri Broxton
Demetri Broxton is a Bay Area artist, independent curator, and Executive Director of Root Division in San Francisco. Born in Oakland, he holds a BFA from UC Berkeley and MA from San Francisco State. His internationally exhibited work is in collections including the de Young Museum and Crocker Art Museum.
Lisa Brown
Lisa Brown is a New York Times bestselling illustrator, writer, and cartoonist. Her picture books include The Airport Book, The Hospital Book, Mummy Cat, and The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming. She's created graphic novels like The Phantom Twin and teaches at California College of the Arts while chairing 826 Valencia's board.
Cari Borja
Cari Borja approaches her work like an anthropologist, exploring cultural production through fashion, film, and food. With a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, she has designed clothing collections, hosted 94 salon dinners, and created immersive installations. She's currently working on gathering-focused books and serves as creative director for various organizations.
Natasha Boas
Dr. Natasha Boas is a French-American transnational independent curator, scholar, and writer based in San Francisco and Paris. Over thirty years, she has contributed groundbreaking exhibitions and scholarship for notable museums while teaching curatorial practice. She approaches curating as storytelling, linking under-represented artists within a broader, more inclusive art history narrative.
Amy Berk
Amy Berk is an artist and educator who taught at San Francisco Art Institute since 2006. She directs the award-winning City Studio program engaging underserved youth through art. She co-founded the Meridian Interns Program and shows internationally. Since 2019, she collaborates on ARTIVATE, creating opportunities for youth art-making and citizenship.
Sadie Barnette
Sadie Barnette was born in Oakland and holds degrees from CalArts and UC San Diego. She has presented solo exhibitions at SFMOMA, Walker Art Center, ICA Los Angeles, and The Kitchen NYC. Her work is in permanent collections including the Guggenheim, Met, Whitney, and Brooklyn Museum. A permanent LAX installation is forthcoming.
Inga Bard
Inga Bard is a Ukrainian-American artist and non-profit founder based in San Francisco. Her work explores misinformation, surveillance capitalism, and public narratives, employing beauty to insist on hope and optimism. She co-founded multiple initiatives including the SHACK15 Art Prize and Art Bae magazine, directing over $1M to Bay Area artists.
Lynne Baer
Lynne Baer is an Independent Art Advisor with over twenty-five years of experience in public art. She has worked with cities, affordable housing projects, and private foundations including the Packard Foundation. Lynne advised UCSF Medical Center on art selection and has lectured nationally on art investing and public art.
Claire Astrow
Claire Astrow is an artist originally from Los Angeles, now residing in San Francisco. She received her BA in Art Practice from University of California, Berkeley. From 2020-21 she held a screenprinting fellowship at Kala Art Institute. From 2017-18 she was awarded the Blau-Gold Fellowship at Root Division. She has shown work at HIT Gallery, Soft Times, Mini Mart, Crisis Club, and Root Division.
Claudia Altman-Siegal
Claudia Altman-Siegel founded Altman-Siegel in 2009, focusing on internationally recognized, museum-level artists who contribute to cultural dialogue. The San Francisco gallery presents significant Bay Area artists while introducing international artists to the city. The program emphasizes young and emerging artists, complemented by historical exhibitions that provide depth and context.
Verda Alexander
Verda Alexander is a Nicaragua-born, San Francisco-based designer, climate activist, and artist. As Editor-at-Large at Metropolis Magazine and co-founder of Studio O+A, she's spent 30 years redefining workplaces. She co-hosts the climate podcast "Break Some Dishes" and champions creative solutions that challenge conventional design wisdom.
Zully Adler
Solomon "Zully" Adler is a curator and Oxford doctoral candidate studying artist Martin Wong. His projects focus on alternative California practices from the late twentieth century. He has curated exhibitions at SFMOMA, Vernon Gardens, and Arcadia Missa, runs Goaty Tapes music label, and received fellowships including Watson, Marshall, and Clarendon.
Janet Bishop
Solomon "Zully" Adler is a curator and Oxford doctoral candidate studying artist Martin Wong. His projects focus on alternative California practices from the late twentieth century. He has curated exhibitions at SFMOMA, Vernon Gardens, and Arcadia Missa, runs Goaty Tapes music label, and received fellowships including Watson, Marshall, and Clarendon.
Stephanie Fine Sasse
Stephanie Fine Sasse combines neuroscience, education, and design. With a Harvard background in neuroscience and psychology, she developed I Am a Scientist, reaching over a million students. She co-authored Science Not Silence (MIT Press) and organized the March for Science, mobilizing over a million worldwide. At The Plenary, Co., she builds immersive exhibitions and interactive salons integrating science, art, and community to inspire civic engagement.
Jane Ganahl
Jane Ganahl is a Bay Area journalist, author, event producer, teacher, and animal activist. In 1999, she co-founded the Litquake literary festival, now the West Coast's largest, with Jack Boulware. During nearly four decades with Hearst newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle, she penned the popular Single Minded column. She authored the memoir Naked on the Page and edited the anthology Single Woman of a Certain Age.
Rob Saunders
Rob Saunders, a letter arts collector for over 40 years, founded The Letterform Archive to share his private collection with the public. Since opening in February 2015, the Archive offers hands-on access to a curated collection of over 100,000 items spanning lettering, typography, calligraphy, and graphic design across thousands of years of history. It has since welcomed over 20,000 guests from more than 30 countries.
Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Ingrid Rojas Contreras was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. Her memoir, The Man Who Could Move Clouds, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and National Book Critics Circle Award. Her debut novel, Fruit of the Drunken Tree, won the California Book Award silver medal in First Fiction. She is a Visiting Writer at Saint Mary's College and lives in California.
Bridget Quinn
Bridget Quinn is author of She Votes: How U.S. Women Won Suffrage, and What Happened Next (Amazon Best History 2020) and award-winning Broad Strokes: 15 Women Who Made Art and Made History (Amazon Best Art 2017, translated into four languages). NPR praised its "spunky attitudinal, SMART writing." Her current book is Portrait of a Woman: Art, Rivalry & Revolution in the Life of Adélaïde Labille-Guiard.
Healther Holt
Heather Holt is an Associate Director with ODC, a groundbreaking contemporary arts institution, which delivers its mission through a world class dance company, an innovative presenting theater and digital platform, and a dance school for movers of all ages and abilities. For decades, Holt has served as a passionate advocate for arts and artists in San Francisco, Bay Area, with deep experience in non-profit management, curating, fundraising, events and hospitality.
Meg Shiffler
Meg Shiffler is a Bay Area–based curator, writer, and arts leader. In 2025, she launched Cities of Glass, a ten-year independent curatorial initiative commissioning site-specific works worldwide. She is the inaugural Director of Artist Space Trust, the nation’s first Community Land Trust for artists. She has worked for the SF Arts Commission (SF), New Museum and Andrea Rosen Gallery (NYC) and co-founded Consolidated Works (Seattle).
Claudia Schmuckli
Claudia Schmuckli is Chief Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. She has curated over 20 exhibitions and installations, including Lee Mingwei: Rituals of Care (2024), Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence (2023), Judy Chicago: A Retrospective (2021), and Uncanny Valley: Being Human in the Age of AI (2020). She also curated Isaac Julien: I Dream a World, the artist's first US retrospective.
Ben Venom
Ben Venom holds an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute (2007). His work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the Levi Strauss Museum (Germany), the National Folk Museum of Korea, and the Taubman Museum of Art. He has been featured by NPR, CBS Sunday Morning, and Playboy. Recent residencies include MASS MoCA and the de Young Museum, and he is Studio Manager of The Space Program SF.
Amanda Uhle
Amanda Uhle is Executive Director and Publisher of McSweeney's, The Believer, and Illustoria, an art and storytelling magazine for young readers. She co-founded The International Congress of Youth Voices with Dave Eggers and co-edits the I, Witness series. Previously, Uhle was executive director of 826michigan for over 11 years. Her writing appears in The Washington Post, Politico, and Newsweek. Her memoir, Destroy This House, is published by Simon & Schuster.
Kal Spelletich
For 25 years, Kal Spelletich has explored the human-machine interface, using technology to reconnect people with intense, real-life experiences. His interactive work requires participants to operate often dangerous machinery, probing boundaries between fear, control, and exhilaration. His work has been exhibited at San Francisco's De Young Museum, SFMOMA, Exploratorium, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, plus internationally. He is represented by Catharine Clark Gallery.
Tabitha Soren
After a career as a reporter, Soren studied art and photography at Stanford University. Her work has been published in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and various other magazines and journals. Soren’s work has been exhibited worldwide, and is in the permanent collections of the Getty Museum, Los Angeles, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, and many more. She is the author of the books Surface Tension (RVB Books, Paris, 2021) and Fantasy Life (Aperture, 2017).
Rebecca Solnit
Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than twenty books on feminism, western and urban history, social change, hope, and catastrophe. Her acclaimed works include Men Explain Things to Me, Hope in the Dark, Orwell's Roses, and A Paradise Built in Hell. A product of California public education, she writes regularly for The Guardian, serves on the board of Oil Change International, and launched the climate project Not Too Late (nottoolateclimate.com).
Griff Williams
Griff Williams is an American painter, publisher, art instructor, filmmaker, and gallerist who owns Gallery 16. His paintings have been exhibited worldwide at major museums including San Diego Museum of Art, Orange County Museum of Art, and San Jose Museum of Art, with reviews in Art in America and Frieze.
Lena Wolff
Lena Wolff is a San Francisco Bay Area artist, craftswoman, and democracy activist whose work spans folk art, minimalism, and political expression through drawing, sculpture, and public projects. She founded Art for Democracy in 2017, creating national voter participation campaigns. Her work is collected by major institutions including the SFMOMA and the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.
Tanya Zimbardo
Tanya Zimbardo is San Francisco-based curator and writer. Over the past decade, she has organized exhibitions and screenings for a range of Bay Area nonprofit organizations including di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, Mills College Art Museum, San Francisco Cinematheque, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Sarah Vowell
Sarah Vowell is the author of seven nonfiction books, including Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, Unfamiliar Fishes, The Wordy Shipmates, and Assassination Vacation. She was a contributing editor for This American Life from 1996 to 2008 and has worked for The New York Times, Salon, Time, Spin, and GQ.
Catherine Wagner
Catherine Wagner is a conceptual artist working in sculpture, installation and photography who has received the Rome Prize, the Guggenheim Fellowship, NEA Fellowships, and the Ferguson Award. Time Magazine named her one of the Fine Arts Innovators of the Year, and her work is in the collections of the MOMA, the Whitney Museum, the LACMA, and the SFMOMA. She is Emeritus Professor of Studio Art at Mills College at Northeastern University.
Chris Ware
Chris Ware is a writer, artist, and author of the books Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, Building Stories, and Rusty Brown. His work has been exhibited at the Hammer Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 2021, Ware received the Grand Prix de la Ville d’Angoulême and a solo retrospective of his work was presented at the Centre Pompidou in 2022.
Sarah Thornton
Sarah Thornton is a sociologist who writes about art, design and people. Author of four critically acclaimed books including international bestseller Seven Days in the Art World, she's known as "the Jane Goodall of the art world." Her latest book Tits Up explores mammary glands' universal truths and cultural meanings.
Adrian Tomine
Adrian Tomine is a bestselling author, screenwriter, and New Yorker cover artist. His award-winning graphic novels include Summer Blonde, Shortcomings and Killing and Dying, which was named one of NPR’s Best Books of the Year. In 2023, Shortcomings was adapted to film by director Randall Park, from a screenplay by Tomine. His short stories were also adapted into the 2021 French film Paris, 13th District.
Isaac Vasquez Avila
Isaac Vazquez Avila, born in Mexico City, is a San Francisco-based painter and sculptor. He holds a BA in Latino/a Studies from SFSU and an MFA from UC Berkeley (2016). Avila runs Avila Mio Studio, creating murals and custom installations. His work has been exhibited at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Guerrero Gallery, and other venues.
Chinzalée Sonami
Chinzalée Sonami runs PALA, a ceramics practice based in her hometown of Oakland. Named "PALA" (Tibetan for "father") after her late Tibetan potter father, she views her work as a time wormhole where father and daughter occupy the same creative space through clay, continuing his artistic legacy.
Steve Thompson
Steve Thompson, raised in rural Southern California, has worked in fabrication since age 8, learning welding and metalwork from his grandfather. After studying physics and philosophy at UC Irvine, he designed dwellings on a West Marin farm and founded Stochastic Labs' fabrication shop. He has worked with numerous artists, designers, and institutions to realize meaningful concepts. He built and now runs Peak Design's prototyping lab.
Sunra Thompson
Sunra Thompson is a designer and the art director of the McSweeney’s Quarterly. Under his helm, the McSweeney's Quarterly has been a finalist for multiple National Magazine Awards in Design, as well as for the Best Illustrated Cover. He lives in Berkeley, California.
Frank Smigiel
Frank Smigiel is a visual arts curator, educator, and writer serving as Director of Arts Programming & Partnerships at the Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture in San Francisco. Formerly an Associate Curator at the SFMOMA, he has collaborated with diverse artists and focuses on theater/time-based art intersections, artist commerce, and queer histories.
David Shrigley
British artist David Shrigley is known for distinctive drawings and satirical commentary on everyday life. His deadpan humor captures overheard conversations and compulsive observations. Working across sculpture, installation, animation, and music, he seeks wider audiences beyond galleries through publications and collaborations.
Jessica Silverman
Jessica Silverman founded her internationally renowned contemporary art gallery in 2008. With an MA in Curatorial Practice from the California College of the Arts, she has a history of building artist careers and curating renowned private collections. Her gallery artists' works have been acquired by major museums, including the MoMA, the Tate, and the SFMOMA.
Leah Rosenberg
Leah Rosenberg works across artistic media to spark new experiences of color. Using painting, installation, printmaking, sculpture, performance, and video she invites viewers to consider how color can be perceived both multi-sensorially and multi-dimensionally. By creating such enriched encounters, her work strives to deepen our understanding of the emotional and psychological impact of color in everyday life.
Ted Russell
Ted Russell led arts strategy at the Kenneth Rainin Foundation and served as a Senior Program Officer at the James Irvine Foundation (2005-16). He holds a BA from Yale and an MBA from UCLA Anderson. He's a Nasher Haemisegger Fellow at SMU DataArts and served as board chair of Grantmakers in the Arts (2020-21).
Dr. Scott D. Sampson
Scott D. Sampson is a Canadian-American paleontologist and science communicator, and the Executive Director of the California Academy of Sciences. Previously Vice President of Research & Collections and Chief Curator at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, he's also known for hosting the PBS Kids show Dinosaur Train.
Boots Riley
Boots Riley is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, rapper, and communist activist. He is the lead vocalist of The Coup and Street Sweeper Social Club. He made his feature-film directorial debut with Sorry to Bother You, which he also wrote. In 2023, the television show I'm a Virgo premiered, which he wrote and directed. Riley is teaming with NEON for I Love Boosters, his latest film, which will star Keke Palmer and Demi Moore.
Larry Rinder
Lawrence Rinder directed the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive from 2008-2020. Previously, he was Founding Director of the Wattis Institute, Dean at the California College of the Arts, and Curator of Contemporary Art at the Whitney Museum. He also writes art criticism, poetry, drama, and fiction.
Kim Stanley Robinson
Kim Stanley Robinson is an acclaimed American science fiction author, best known for his Mars Trilogy. A multiple award winner—including Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards—The New Yorker recognizes him as "one of the greatest living science-fiction writers." His work has profoundly shaped contemporary science fiction literature.
Nicholas Price
Nicholas Price works as the Master Printer at Magnolia Editions in Oakland, California. An alum of the San Francisco Art Institute, he also served as a Studio Artist at Root Division (2012-2014) before returning in 2016 to pilot Root Division's Alumni Studio Artist Program.
Renny Pritikin
Renny Pritikin is a San Francisco Bay Area curator, art writer, and poet. He has served as Chief Curator at New Langton Arts, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, The Nelson Gallery at UC Davis, and the Contemporary Jewish Museum. Pritikin has authored five poetry books and a memoir.
Rigo 23
Rigo 23 is a Portuguese-born visual artist and sculptor known in San Francisco for "sign" murals including: One Tree next to the U.S. Route 101 on-ramp at 10th and Bryant Street, Innercity Home on a public housing structure, Sky/Ground on an abandoned building at 3rd and Mission Street, and Extinct over a Shell gas station. He earned his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and MFA from Stanford University.
yétúndé ọlágbajú
yétúndé ọlágbajú is a Nigerian/Gullah-Geeche research-based artist, creative producer, and cultural strategist based in California. Their work explores the question: "What must we reckon with as we build a future, together?" Through sonic, sculptural, and collaborative practices, ọlágbajú examines interdependence and transformation within Black diaspora experiences, untangling possibilities emerging from collective reckonings.
Christo Oropeza
San Francisco native Christo Oropeza is a "cultural worker" encompassing roles as artist, curator, gallerist, producer, and museum staffer. Recent projects include SFMOMA murals, Facebook's Artist in Residence program, and gallery exhibitions. He co-founded Incline Gallery, was named to YBCA 100, and established San Pancho Art Collective.
Woody De Othello
Woody De Othello, based in Oakland, California, transforms everyday objects—clocks, phones, fans—into clay and bronze vessels of psychic significance, drawing from African nkisi traditions. His sculptures and two-dimensional works create surrealistic distortions of scale and time, making the familiar uncanny and illegible. He is represented by Jessica Silverman Gallery.
Deborah Munk
As Manager of Sustainability Education Programs at Recology, Deborah Munk has supported Bay Area artists for 25 years through the Artist in Residence and Educational Tour Programs. She has expanded the AIR Program across the western region and developed educational tours engaging thousands annually, fostering creativity and conservation.
Robyn O’Neil
Robyn O'Neil is a Washington State-based artist whose work appeared in the 2004 Whitney Biennial and over fifty museums worldwide. She has received numerous grants including Joan Mitchell Foundation and Artadia awards, plus the Hunting Prize. She wrote and art directed the film WE, THE MASSES and hosts the podcast ME READING STUFF. Represented by Susan Inglett Gallery, Inman Gallery, and Western Exhibitions.
Ellen Oh
Ellen Oh is a creative producer and arts administrator with 25 years of experience across diverse organizations, and is the Director of Interdisciplinary Programs at Stanford University. She catalyzes programs, curates teams, and demonstrates the arts' transformative impact. Ellen serves on the advisory boards of Root Division and the Headlands Center for the Arts while raising two creative daughters.
Susan Miller
Susan Miller is a seasoned arts and academic professional who has developed four interdisciplinary campus research groups at UC Berkeley since 2008, including the Berkeley Center for New Media. Previously executive director of San Francisco's New Langton Arts, she specializes in video, media arts, and Bay Area creative practice, curating exhibitions internationally.
Jonathan Carver Moore
Jonathan Carver Moore is San Francisco's only openly gay Black male-owned contemporary art gallery, specializing in emerging and established BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and women artists. Committed to amplifying underrepresented voices through a Black queer lens, the gallery champions community accessibility, welcoming novice and avid collectors alike while celebrating diversity throughout the art world.
Jennifer Morla
Jennifer Morla founded Morla Design in 1984, creating acclaimed branding, retail environments, and motion graphics. She has been awarded graphic design's highest honors: the AIGA Medal and the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Award. Her work appears in the permanent collections of the MOMA, the LACMA, and the Smithsonian, with the SFMOMA acquiring over 50 pieces for its permanent collection.
Michelle Mansour
Michelle Mansour is an Egyptian-American artist, educator, and curator based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has been exhibited at venues including The de Young Museum and the SFMOMA Artists Gallery. She holds an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and has participated in residencies at the Djerassi Resident Artist Program and internationally. She was the Executive Director of Root Division Gallery for 21 years.
Jill Manton
Jill Manton is a nationally recognized public art leader with entrepreneurial skills and renowned curatorial expertise. A former San Francisco Arts Commission Director of Programs and Public Art, Manton authored the $50 million Treasure Island Arts Master Plan and established the San Francisco Public Art Trust. She has raised over $72.5M for art initiatives and received the Rockefeller Foundation Grant.
Barry McGee
Barry McGee, a San Francisco Art Institute graduate, emerged from the Mission School movement and street art culture as "Twist." His work addresses social issues through various personas, featuring his signature droopy-eyed male figure representing empathy for the homeless. Using geometric patterns, found objects, and the "cluster method," McGee creates art examining public versus private space while advocating for marginalized communities.
Asha Kilgallen McGee
Asha Kilgallen McGee is a curator and communications coordinator based in the North Bay. She earned her B.A. in Art History from UC Santa Barbara in 2023, exploring how contemporary art holds memory, builds community, and speaks across disciplines. Inspired by her Bay Area roots, she collaborates with emerging and established artists.
Amy Kisch
Amy Kisch is a social impact strategist and curator who founded Art+Action, Collect For Change™, and AKArt Advisory. She leverages art to inspire action and deepen public discussions around collective responsibility. A 2020 YBCA 100 Honoree with an Masters in Social Work, she previously ran Sotheby's global VIP program and holds a BA from Columbia University.
Amy Kurzwell
Amy Kurzweil is a cartoonist and the author of two graphic memoirs: Flying Couch and Artificial: A Love Story, which was named a Best Book of 2023 by NPR, The New Yorker, and Kirkus. Her writing, comics and cartoons have also been published in The Verge, The New York Times Book Review, The Believer, and many other publications. Artificial: A Love Story, follows the life of her father and her grandfather, another survivor of the Holocaust.
Maira Kalman
Maira Kalman has written and illustrated over 30 books for adults and children. She has been a frequent contributor to The New York Times and The New Yorker, and has created textiles for Isaac Mizrahi and Kate Spade and sets for Mark Morris. Her art has been exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide, and she is represented by Mary Ryan Gallery.
Dorka Keehn
Dorka Keehn is known for innovative public artworks including leading fundraising for The Bay Lights on San Francisco Bay Bridge. A former SF Arts Commissioner, she co-founded Sites Unseen, activating underused alleys with arts programming. She serves on various arts boards and creates acclaimed site-specific installations with collaborator Brian Goggin.
Em Kettner
Em Kettner is a Richmond, CA-based artist and writer. Recent solo shows include exhibitions at François Ghebaly Gallery, Chapter NY, and HARPY. Her work appears in major collections including the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and has been featured in Artforum, Art in America, and Paris Review. She's represented by François Ghebaly Gallery.
Chris Johanson
Chris Johanson is a Los Angeles and Portland-based artist and key figure in San Francisco's Mission School post-punk movement. His diverse practice encompasses painting, drawing, sculpture, design, and music, exploring spirituality, sociology, and environmental themes through conceptually open works that encourage contemplation of everyday life experiences.
PJ Johnston
PJ Johnston is the former Executive Director of the San Francisco Film Commission and was president of the San Francisco Arts Commission for nine years. He has served on boards of various nonprofit organizations focused on arts and advocacy for women and African Americans, and is currently a board member of the African American Arts & Culture Complex.
Spike Jonze
Spike Jonze is an acclaimed filmmaker who directed Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Where the Wild Things Are, and Her, winning the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Her. As a producer, his credits include Michel Gondry's Human Nature and Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York. Jonze also created and executive produced the Jackass television and film franchise, and serves on 826LA's Advisory Board.
Johanna Jackson
Johanna Jackson is a multidisciplinary artist creating sculptural and functional objects like vessels and household items that transcend utility to become profound art. Recent exhibitions include Gallery 12.26, Dallas, and Tennis Elbow, New York. She collaborates with Chris Johanson on furniture and lives between Portland and Topanga Canyon.
Annice Jacoby
Annice Jacoby is recognized for innovative work in public art, literature, and visual arts. Highlights include Street Art San Francisco: Mission Muralismo (Abrams), Cultural Encounters for the de Young Museum, and City of Poets for the San Francisco Public Library. Her work expands art in public life, employing poetry, theater, and media to examine critical issues.
Maria Jenson
Maria Jenson is Creative and Executive Director of SOMArts, advancing innovative strategies to sustain creative communities. She has deepened the organization's commitment to racial equity through groundbreaking exhibitions and expanded public programs. A Getty Foundation Executive Leadership Institute graduate, she previously worked at SFMOMA and founded ArtPadSF.
Liz Hickok
San Francisco artist Liz Hickok creates immersive artworks blending low and high technology through photography, sculpture, video, and installation. Using playful materials, she intermingles science and nature in whimsical spaces. Her recent projects incorporate augmented reality and interactive technologies, fostering personal connections and bridging the gap between artist and viewer.
Candace Huey
Candace Huey is an interdisciplinary curator and art historian who founded re.riddle, an experimental contemporary art gallery. She has worked for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Bonham's auction house, and various Bay Area galleries. With degrees from The Courtauld and UC Berkeley, she serves on the SECA Council at SFMOMA and the Northern California ArtTable Leadership Committee.
Valerie Imus
Valerie Imus is a curator, writer, and artist with an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The Co-Director and Artistic Director at Southern Exposure since 2011, she has curated numerous projects including Over the Wall and New New Games. She collaborates with The Citizens Laboratory and OPENrestaurant.
Paul Henderson
Paul Henderson is a fourth-generation San Franciscan art curator, collector, and cultural strategist from Bayview-Hunter's Point. He serves on boards of the California African American Museum and ArtLikeMe, advancing equity-focused cultural initiatives. His Henderson Art Collection intentionally introduces audiences to emerging artists while challenging cultural stereotypes and expanding arts representation.
Liz Hernández
Liz Hernández creates art through painting, sculpture, and textiles, blending storytelling with material experimentation. She reinterprets Mexican craft traditions like embroidery and repujado into her own visual language. Her work has been exhibited worldwide, at venues in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and Mexico City. Her work is in the permanent collections of the SFMOMA, the de Young Museum, and KADIST.
Jonn Herschend
Jonn Herschend is an interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and experimental publisher raised in a midwestern amusement park. His work explores fiction, reality, and narrative structures explaining everyday chaos. He's exhibited at the Whitney Museum, Telluride Film Festival, and SFMOMA, co-founded THE THING Quarterly, and is a Fleishhacker Eureka Fellow and recipient of the SFMOMA SECA Award.
Joyce Grimm
Joyce Grimm was Chief Curator at Adobe's Festival of the Impossible and Founder of Triple Base Gallery. She annually reinvents interactive exhibitions by showcasing thought-provoking artworks with cutting-edge technology, including virtual and augmented reality experiences and sensory-enhancing art installations that push the boundaries of traditional gallery experiences.
Maria Guzmán Capron
Maria A. Guzmán Capron creates vibrant textile works exploring cultural hybridity and non-binary identity. Born in Milan to Colombian-Peruvian parents, later moving to Texas, the artist examines assimilation and visibility through multilayered fabric constructions. Their practice manifests the competing cultural influences that shape us, highlighting our multiple, sometimes conflicting identities.
Shawn Harris
Shawn Harris is an award-winning author and illustrator. His debut, Have You Ever Seen A Flower, received a Caldecott Honor. He illustrated the Newbery Medal-winning The Eyes and the Impossible and won the Bull-Bransom Award for A Polar Bear in the Snow.
Rudolf Frieling
Rudolf Frieling, the SFMOMA's Emeritus Curator of Media Arts (2006-2025) organized major exhibitions including The Art of Participation (2008), Bruce Conner: It's All True (2016), the retrospective Nam June Paik (2021), and What Matters (2023-2024). He has served as faculty at the California College of the Arts and the San Francisco Art Institute.
Ted Gioia
Ted Gioia is a San Francisco-based writer and arts leader serving as Program & Development Director at Arion Press. His essays have appeared in The New Republic, New York Magazine, and VQR. His debut fiction will be published by First Bite Press in 2025, and he's currently writing a novel.
Andrew Sean Greer
Andrew Sean Greer is an American novelist and short story writer who received the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel Less. Author of six works of fiction including The Story of a Marriage and The Confessions of Max Tivoli, he has taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and been an NEA Fellow and National Book Award judge.
Marcel Dzama
Drawing from folk vernacular and art-historical influences, Marcel Dzama's work visualizes childhood fantasies and otherworldly fairy tales. His works are held in major collections including the MoMA, the Guggenheim, the Centre Pompidou, and the Tate. Since 1998, Dzama has been represented by David Zwirner, exhibiting widely internationally.
Kristin Farr
Kristin Farr is an artist and has served as a curator, journalist and producer for KQED, Juxtapoz Magazine and Facebook’s original artist-in-residence program. She has created public art installations locally and internationally, and founded the Emmy-winning educational film series, KQED Art School.
Tammy Fortin
Tammy Fortin is a writer and musician who has worked at four art museums, incorporating visual culture into her writing. She established a writing residency at the Broad Art Museum in 2012 and has written for various publications. She recently finished a novel and plays guitar in the band Excuses for Skipping.
Mark Dion
Mark Dion is an internationally recognized artist who studied at Hartford Art School (BFA 1986), School of Visual Arts, and Whitney Museum's Independent Study Program. He holds honorary doctorates from University of Hartford (2002) and Wagner Free Institute (2015), plus an Honorary Fellowship from Falmouth University (2014).
Christopher Duncan
Christopher Robin Duncan is an Oakland-based multidisciplinary artist who uses sun, moon, time, and tides as creative prompts. His sun exposure works involve draping fabrics over objects for six months to a year, creating images between painting and photography. His sonic compositions feature harmonica, tuning forks, and field recordings, while recent ceramic work includes instruments and functional pieces.
Christine Duval
Christine Duval is a visionary art curator with over 20 years of experience creating groundbreaking contemporary exhibitions. Specializing in multimedia and digital works, she has organized more than 100 exhibitions across Europe and the US. The former Executive Director of LIMN ART GALLERY and Senior Curator at DEPICT, she champions technology-driven art.
Catherine Clark
Catharine Clark is the founder and director of Catharine Clark Gallery, a San Francisco contemporary art gallery established in 1991. Known for building lasting artist relationships, she has expanded the gallery with initiatives like EXiT bookstore and BOXBLUR performance program. A San Francisco native with professional dance background, her art passion began through family exposure.
Jen de los Reyes
Jen de los Reyes, born in Winnipeg, was shaped by the mid-90s Riot grrrl and DIY music scene. As a show organizer, zine creator, and band member, she developed foundational skills that inform her current creative practice. Her graduate work at University of Regina helped her recognize organizing as integral to her artistic work.
Cheryl Derricote
Cheryl Derricotte is a visual artist and sculptor. Her favorite medium is glass, and she also creates works on paper and textiles. Originally from Washington, DC, she lives and makes art in San Francisco, CA. Her art has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Francisco Examiner, KQED, MerciSF and The San Francisco Business Times.
Jeff Chang
Jeff Chang is a writer, host, and cultural organizer specializing in culture, politics, arts, and music. His latest book Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America debuted in September 2025. He hosts the Signal Award-winning podcast Edge of Reason and Notes From the Edge.
Julie Chang
Julie Chang is a San Francisco-based contemporary artist with an MFA from Stanford University (2007) and degrees from Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the San Francisco Art Institute, the San Jose Museum of Art, and galleries in Washington DC and Istanbul. She's represented by Hosfelt Gallery.
Abby Chen
Asian Art Museum Curator Abby Chen received the 2024 NAEA AACIG Distinguished Art Educator Award. Her experimental approach explores intersectionalities of race, sexuality, gender, nation, migration, and technology in the United States and Asia. Her award-winning exhibitions have helped reshape the narrative of contemporary Asian art, including After Hope: Videos of Resistance, Chanel Miller: I was I am I will be, Kongkee: Warring States Cyberpunk, and Into View: Bernice Bing.
Demetri Broxton
Demetri Broxton is a Bay Area artist, independent curator, and Executive Director of Root Division in San Francisco. Born in Oakland, he holds a BFA from UC Berkeley and MA from San Francisco State. His internationally exhibited work is in collections including the de Young Museum and the Crocker Art Museum.
Julie Casemore
Julie Casemore is a gallerist and curator who founded Casemore Gallery in San Francisco in 2015, specializing in contemporary photographic practices. Located within Minnesota Street Project, the gallery represents established artists like Larry Sultan's Estate and emerging West Coast photographers. She previously worked at Stephen Wirtz Gallery and exhibits at major international art fairs.
Thi Bui
Thi Bui is a Vietnamese-American graphic memoirist who fled Vietnam in 1978 as a refugee. Her acclaimed debut The Best We Could Do won numerous awards and made Bill Gates' top five books. She's also a Caldecott Honor winner for illustrating A Different Pond and is currently working on graphic nonfiction about immigration detention.
Natasha Boas
Dr. Natasha Boas is a French-American transnational independent curator, scholar, and writer based in San Francisco and Paris. Over 30 years, she has contributed groundbreaking exhibitions and scholarship for notable museums while teaching curatorial practice. She approaches curating as storytelling, linking under-represented artists within a broader, more inclusive art history narrative.
Cari Borja
Cari Borja approaches her work like an anthropologist, exploring cultural production through fashion, film, and food. With a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, she has designed clothing collections, hosted 94 salon dinners, and created immersive installations. She's currently working on gathering-focused books and serves as creative director for various organizations.
Lisa Brown
Lisa Brown is a New York Times bestselling illustrator, writer, and cartoonist. Her picture books include The Airport Book, The Hospital Book, Mummy Cat, and The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming. She's created graphic novels like The Phantom Twin and teaches at the California College of the Arts while chairing 826 Valencia's board.
Inga Bard
Inga Bard is a Ukrainian-American artist and nonprofit founder based in San Francisco. Her work explores misinformation, surveillance capitalism, and public narratives, employing beauty to insist on hope and optimism. She co-founded multiple initiatives including the SHACK15 Art Prize and Art Bae magazine, directing over $1M to Bay Area artists.
Sadie Barnette
Sadie Barnette was born in Oakland and holds degrees from CalArts and UC San Diego. She has presented solo exhibitions at the SFMOMA, the Walker Art Center, the ICA Los Angeles, and The Kitchen NYC. Her work is in many permanent collections, including the Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum.
Amy Berk
Amy Berk is an artist and educator who taught at the San Francisco Art Institute from 2006-2022. She directs the award-winning City Studio program engaging underserved youth through art. She co-founded the Meridian Interns Program and exhibits her work internationally. Since 2019, she collaborates on ARTIVATE, creating opportunities for youth art-making and citizenship.
Claudia Altman-Siegal
Claudia Altman-Siegel founded Altman-Siegel in 2009, focusing on internationally recognized, museum-level artists who contribute to cultural dialogue. The San Francisco gallery presents significant Bay Area artists while introducing international artists to the city. The program emphasizes young and emerging artists, complemented by historical exhibitions that provide depth and context.
Claire Astrow
Claire Astrow is an artist originally from Los Angeles, now residing in San Francisco. She received her BA in Art Practice from University of California, Berkeley. From 2020-21 she held a screenprinting fellowship at Kala Art Institute. From 2017-18 she was awarded the Blau-Gold Fellowship at Root Division. She has shown work at HIT Gallery, Soft Times, Mini Mart, Crisis Club, and Root Division.
Lynne Baer
Lynne Baer is an Independent Art Advisor with over 25 years of experience in public art. She has worked with cities, affordable housing projects, and private foundations including the Packard Foundation. Lynne advised the UCSF Medical Center on its permanent art selection and has lectured nationally on art investing and public art.
Janet Bishop
Janet Bishop is Chief Curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Over her thirty-year career at the institution, she has served as curator for exhibitions including "Matisse/Diebenkorn" (2016–17), "The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant Garde" (2011–12), and the critically acclaimed "Ruth Asawa: Retrospective" (2025). Bishop holds a BA in art history and psychology from Cornell University and an MA in art history from Columbia University.
Verda Alexander
Verda Alexander is a Nicaragua-born, San Francisco-based designer, climate activist, and artist. As Editor-at-Large at Metropolis Magazine and co-founder of Studio O+A, she's spent 30 years redefining workplaces and crafting the discipline of interior design. She co-hosts the climate podcast Break Some Dishes and champions creative solutions that challenge conventional design wisdom.
Zully Adler
Solomon "Zully" Adler is a curator and Oxford doctoral candidate studying the artist Martin Wong. Adler’s projects focus on alternative California practices from the late twentieth century, and he has curated exhibitions at the SFMOMA, Vernon Gardens, Los Angeles, and Arcadia Missa, London. He’s received myriad awards, including the Watson Fellowship, the Marshall Scholarship (University of Cambridge), and the Clarendon Scholarship (Oxford). He runs the Goaty Tapes music label.
Ben Venom
Ben Venom holds an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute (2007). His work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the Levi Strauss Museum (Germany), the National Folk Museum of Korea, and the Taubman Museum of Art. He has been featured by NPR, CBS Sunday Morning, and Playboy. Recent residencies include MASS MoCA and the de Young Museum, and he is Studio Manager of The Space Program SF.
Tucker Nichols
Tucker Nichols is a Northern California-based artist working in painting, drawing, sculpture, mail art, books, and installations. His work has been featured at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Denver Art Museum, and internationally. His drawings have appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times. Recent books include Flowers for Things I Don't Know How to Say (2024) and Mostly Everything (2025).
Ben Venom
Ben Venom holds an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute (2007). His work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the Levi Strauss Museum (Germany), the National Folk Museum of Korea, and the Taubman Museum of Art. He has been featured by NPR, CBS Sunday Morning, and Playboy. Recent residencies include MASS MoCA and the de Young Museum, and he is Studio Manager of The Space Program SF.
Ben Venom
Ben Venom holds an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute (2007). His work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the Levi Strauss Museum (Germany), the National Folk Museum of Korea, and the Taubman Museum of Art. He has been featured by NPR, CBS Sunday Morning, and Playboy. Recent residencies include MASS MoCA and the de Young Museum, and he is Studio Manager of The Space Program SF.
Ben Venom
Ben Venom holds an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute (2007). His work has been exhibited internationally at venues including the Levi Strauss Museum (Germany), the National Folk Museum of Korea, and the Taubman Museum of Art. He has been featured by NPR, CBS Sunday Morning, and Playboy. Recent residencies include MASS MoCA and the de Young Museum, and he is Studio Manager of The Space Program SF.
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— Dave Eggers, Author, Artist, and Co Founder of Art + Water
Your support today brings us closer to opening our doors in 2026. Every gift shapes the future of art making in this city and sustains the artists who will define it.
Major Gifts: Naming Opportunities
Supporters making gifts of $100,000 or more are invited to explore naming opportunities for key spaces and programs. Leave a lasting mark at Art + Water by contacting Rebecca Teague, Development Director, at rebecca@artpluswater.org
Founding Circle Gifts
Founding Circle supporters giving $20,000 and above bring Art + Water’s vision to life! Founding Circle members will be honored as essential partners and kept closely updated as the project unfolds.
Your gift today builds a free artist residency, a public atelier, and a cultural hub on San Francisco’s dazzling waterfront. Together, we can create a home for artists and an arts destination for all.
DONATE TODAY
TO ART + WATER
VISIT ART + WATER SEVEN DAYS A WEEK
Address
Art + Water
Pier 29
1256 The Embarcadero
San Francisco, CA. 94133
Email: info@artpluswater.org
Future Art + Water Hours
Monday 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
Tuesday 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
Wednesday 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
Thursday 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
Friday 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
Saturday 10 a.m.–5 p.m.
Sunday 11 a.m.–5 p.m.
Getting Here
Our main visitor entrance is at the south-facing entrance of Pier 29, at the intersection of Sansome Street and The Embarcadero. We are about a 20-minute walk from the Embarcadero BART and MUNI station and other public transportation. We are just steps from Pier 23 Café Restaurant and Bar and Levi’s Plaza, and 9 minute walk from The Exploratorium. There is ample public metered parking nearby.
FAQ
RESIDENCIES FOR ESTABLISHED AND EMERGING ARTISTS
Q: There are 9 residencies right now for established artists. How were these established artists chosen?
A: These established artists were chosen much like a university would choose a faculty. These artists have been granted free studio space in exchange for teaching and mentoring emerging artists from all over San Francisco.
Q: There will be 20 free studios available for emerging artists. Who can apply and when?
A: These 20 emerging artists will be chosen by our established artists, through a portfolio process. Our program is open to all San Francisco residents ages 21 and above. (Sorry, no one from outside the city can be considered for now.) There are no tuition fees or degree requirements, only a demonstrated commitment to craft, learning, and community. We will announce the open application process soon, and we will be doing extensive outreach to make sure that everyone in the city knows about it. But for those hoping to apply: Get your portfolios ready, with an emphasis on two-dimensional art.
Q: What disciplines will be represented?
A: Our studios will support painting, drawing, and printmaking. We had to limit the scope of our programs to be sure that we were able to provide a very thorough one-year educational program for our emerging artists. Thus we chose to focus on two-dimensional art that required very little equipment and electricity.
Q: How long is the residency for these emerging artists?
A: It will be for one year. During this year, our emerging artists will get world-class instruction and mentorship from our established artists. The emerging artists will be expected to be on-site most days of that year — much like they would at a college-level or post collegiate program.
Q: What is expected of these emerging artists?
A: These emerging artists will take classes together most weekdays, always as a unit of 20 students, and share expertise and help each other along the way. They will also be expected to take care of Pier 29, its galleries and exhibition hall. In doing so, they will gain valuable knowledge of the workings of all aspects of the art world — from production to museum curation and exhibition to the sale of art and related goods.
GALLERY SPACE FOR SF ARTS ORGANIZATIONS
Q: How much gallery space will Art + Water have, and who can reserve it?
A: We will have approximately 10,000 square feet of convertible gallery space. Much like we see at Fort Mason with its portable walls, we will be able to change the configuration of our gallery area every month. These spaces will face the south entrances to the building, accessible to Pier 27. Visitors walking along the Embarcadero will be able to go directly to the gallery spaces, entering for free as they would a gallery located elsewhere in the city.
Q: Who will maintain these galleries?
A: The galleries overall will be overseen by Sherry Knutson, our Head of Studios, and our Art + Water staff. When exhibiting organizations ask to use 1,500 square feet of gallery space for a 2-month period, for example, they will be the ones to staff that space. It will be a bit like the Ferry Building in that respect — an array of individual organizations showing their own work and staffing their own (temporary) spaces.
Q: Who will select the programming of Art + Water’s gallery spaces for partner organizations?
A: Art + Water will do everything possible to accommodate space requests from all local arts groups! We will be the ultimate determiner if we can grant space, however. The amount of space requested and scheduling will, of course, be factors. But again, we believe that many dozens of local partners will find space with us in any given year. For more information, reach out to Sherry Knutson, at sherry@artpluswater.org.
MAJOR EXHIBITIONS
Q: Will Art + Water be competing for major shows with other museums in the city?
A: Not at all. Our aim is that Art + Water exhibitions and Special Events can be looser, more time sensitive, and perhaps a bit more populist in spirit than the spectacular fine arts programming such as that at the nearby SFMOMA, YBCA, and local galleries. Because flexibility is key to everything we plan to do at Art + Water, we hope to mount shows that can quickly react to events in the world, that can be exciting and fresh, and that need not be planned many years in advance. Because the pier is not a pristine museum environment, and its large doors and loading make it exceptionally accessible, we can also mount shows of monumental installations and artworks that would be far harder to show in tighter quarters or in a museum setting.
Q: Will Art + Water be free to the public?
A: Admission to smaller exhibitions, most programs, and many community events will always be free. We believe access to art and creativity should never depend on income. We will charge for tickets to our major exhibitions, but families and groups will always be given steep discounts. Accessibility will be key.
CLASSES FOR KIDS, SCHOOLS, AND FAMILIES
Q: Will you offer classes to the public?
A: Yes! In addition to the residency program, Art + Water will host free and low-cost workshops, family art days, and community classes for all ages and experience levels. Wendy MacNaughton, who founded DrawTogether, will be designing these programs with her team, and they promise to be fun and welcoming for all. Check back with us as we get closer to our Spring 2026 opening for more details.
FUNDING + STRUCTURE
Q: How is Art + Water funded?
A: Art + Water is supported by donations from generous individuals, foundations, and corporate partners who share our belief that art belongs to everyone. Art + Water is a fiscally sponsored project of The Hawkins Project, a registered 501(c)(3). We are applying for our own 501(c)(3) status, which we expect to be granted in the spring. All donations are tax-deductible. For more information, please contact Rebecca Teague at rebeccca@artpluswater.org, or visit the donate page above.
FOOD AND BEVERAGE
Q: Will Art + Water feature any food or coffee to visitors?
A: We hope so! At the very least, we will have a coffee cart outside the pier and expect food trucks and other temporary vendors to make Pier 29 a destination. After all, there is a vast parking lot next door. If all goes to plan, Mokhtar Alkhanshali, the world’s foremost importer of Yemeni coffee, and the hero of The Monk of Mokha, will set up a one-of-a-kind coffee experience in Pier 29.
THE SPACE ITSELF
Q: When will Art + Water open?
A: Design, construction and renovation are underway at Pier 29, with public programming and residencies launching in phases beginning in late Spring 2026.
Q: Why Pier 29?
A: Pier 29 is a historic 100,000-square-foot space on the Embarcadero, one of the few remaining large-scale public sites in the city’s core. By transforming it into a home for artists and the community, we're helping reimagine San Francisco’s waterfront as a cultural hub.
Q: We are hearing you will have indoor trees and a maximalist look. True?
A: True. The great Flora Grubb has agreed to be our consultant in all things plant-related, and together we are dreaming of a virtual forest of trees, succulents, flowers, and even vines inside our space. We want the look of Art + Water to be maximalist, warm and welcoming, and bursting with life and color. And because of the unique nature of the pier, most of Art + Water will be on wheels — endlessly re-shapeable. You’ll never come to Art + Water and see quite the same space twice.
OUR PRO BONO PARTNERS
WRNS Studio is our pro bono architectural partner. One of the great architectural studios in San Francisco, they are located just off the Embarcadero, and have a long and illustrious track record of working to make SF better and more beautiful.
Particularly relevant here, WRNS Studios provided pro bono architectural services to 826 Valencia when it was building its second and third major locations in San Francisco. They first designed and oversaw the building of 826 Valencia’s center in the Tenderloin, at Golden Gate and Leavenworth. With the help of WRNS, BCCI Construction, and Gensler, 826 Valencia was able to transform a former liquor store into a light-filled educational haven for young people in the Tenderloin.
Next, 826 Valencia asked WRNS for help in making the first floor of a new building in Mission Bay into a beautiful space for learning. As you can see from these photos, WRNS was able to design a wondrous and weird space — which was also built with a modest budget in mind.
Since WRNS Studio’s founding in 2005, they’ve dedicated themselves to pro-bono work, collaborating with non-profits like the Trust for Public Land and numerous schools to create inclusive, welcoming spaces that offer educational opportunities and open green space communities that need them.
Starting in 2018, WRNS Studio has partnered with 826 Valencia in a series of inspiring pro-bono projects, including in-school projects at the San Francisco International High School and, most recently, for the Charles Drew Elementary School. Each project has been meticulously crafted to foster imagination and inspire young writers while demonstrating the power of community engagement.
“Over many projects at our centers and schools, the good people at WRNS Studio have created joyful learning environments that inspire creativity and engagement.” – Bita Nazarian, Executive Director, 826 Valencia
WRNS Studio is our pro bono architectural partner. One of the great architectural studios in San Francisco, they are located just off the Embarcadero, and have a long and illustrious track record of working to make San Francisco better and more beautiful.
Particularly relevant here, WRNS Studios provided pro bono architectural services to 826 Valencia when it was building its second and third major locations in San Francisco. They first designed and oversaw the building of 826 Valencia’s center in the Tenderloin, at Golden Gate and Leavenworth. With the help of WRNS, BCCI Construction, and Gensler, 826 Valencia was able to transform a former liquor store into a light-filled educational haven for young people in the Tenderloin.
Next, 826 Valencia asked WRNS for help in making the first floor of a new building in Mission Bay a beautiful space for learning. As you can see from these photos, WRNS was able to design a wondrous and weird space — which was also built with a modest budget in mind.
Since WRNS Studio’s founding in 2005, they’ve dedicated themselves to pro bono work, collaborating with non-profits like the Trust for Public Land and numerous schools to create inclusive, welcoming spaces that offer educational opportunities and open green space communities that need them.
Starting in 2018, WRNS Studio also has partnered with 826 Valencia in a series of inspiring pro bono projects, at the San Francisco International High School and, most recently, for the Charles Drew Elementary School. Each project has been meticulously crafted to foster imagination and inspire young writers while demonstrating the power of community engagement.
"Over many projects at our centers and schools, the good people at WRNS Studio have created joyful learning environments that inspire creativity and engagement.” – Bita Nazarian, Executive Director, 826 Valencia
OUR In-Kind PARTNERS:
WRNS STUDIO
Polsinelli’s Jed Bonner, Emina Kwok and Andrew Peterson serve as our pro bono attorney partners. Polsinelli is an Am Law 100 firm with more than 1,200 attorneys in over 25 offices nationwide. Recognized as one of the top firms for excellent client service and client relationships, Polsinelli is committed to meeting our clients’ expectations of what a law firm should be. Our attorneys provide value through practical legal counsel infused with business insight, offering comprehensive corporate, transactional, litigation and regulatory services with a focus on health care, real estate, finance, technology, private equity and life sciences.
Jed Bonner’s practice spans the full spectrum of transactional real estate, including acquisitions and dispositions, leasing, financing and development. Recognized by Best Lawyers in Real Estate Law, Jed represents institutional and non-institutional sponsors, owners and operators in connection with complex purchase, sale and sale-leaseback transactions, as well as both landlords and tenants in leases of industrial, office, retail and life science space located throughout the United States.
Emina Kwok has nearly 20 years of experience representing national and local investors, institutions and individuals with real estate transactional and development matters across the country. Based out of the Chicago office, her experience extends across the areas of commercial and residential acquisition and dispositions, leasing and leasebacks—representing both landlords and tenants, and commercial development. She previously served as Vice President of Membership for the Asian American Bar Association of Las Vegas.
Andrew Peterson’s practice focuses primarily on commercial real estate transactions, including acquisitions, dispositions, leasing, development and financing in a wide range of asset classes, including industrial, retail, office, multifamily and health care.
POLSINELLI - What a Law Firm Should Be
COBLENTZ PATCH DUFFY & BASS LLP LAW FIRM
Geena Yu and Matt Bove of the firm Coblentz Patch Duffy & Bass LLP are our pro bono attorney partners. Associate Geena Yu has donated her time and knowledge to guide us through the complex process of forming a non-profit organization. Yu brings deep experience in nonprofit, tax, and corporate law, advising a wide range of exempt organizations including private foundations, public charities, and social welfare organizations. With a background that bridges non-profit law, complex transactions, and high-impact philanthropy, she offers a uniquely broad and strategic perspective that helps clients achieve their goals with confidence.
Her thoughtful, client-centered approach to governance and operations has been invaluable to us as we take these first foundational steps.
We also extend our deepest thanks to Matt Bove, a partner at Coblentz, for generously supporting us with his time and expertise. The extraordinary generosity and expertise of Yu, Bove, and the entire Coblentz team has made it possible for Art + Water to to move forward in establishing itself as a nonprofit and applying for 501(c)(3) status. We could not have reached this milestone without their support.
Flora Grubb Gardens is our pro bono greening and gardening partner. Known for being "far more than a nursery," it's a plant shop and a home decor store, but above all, it's an experience. The shop specializes in drought-tolerant plants that inspire customers in creating lavishly beautiful gardens that require minimal water and chemicals to maintain. They carry an unrivaled collection of rare and unusual drought-tolerant plants, along with pottery and furniture to create dream gardens. Most of the plants they sell are grown by Flora Grubb on their very own farms in the beautiful Rainbow Valley in Southern California.
Flora Grubb Gardens was founded by Flora Grubb and her business partner Saul Nadler, who joined forces as Grubb & Nadler after Flora moved to San Francisco in 1999 from Austin, Texas, where she had been gardening for years. After buying a small nursery in the Mission District in 2003, they moved to their current location at 1634 Jerrold Ave in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood.
The Bayview store features an open-air building clad with reclaimed barnwood and equipped with solar panels. Plants, furniture, and pottery are arranged like they would be in gardens, creating a lush and inviting environment that's unlike anything else in Northern California.
In 2023, Flora Grubb Gardens opened their second retail location on two sunny acres in Marina del Rey, Los Angeles. The business has grown to include both retail operations and a wholesale nursery that sells plants grown to Flora Grubb Gardens' exacting standards for designers, landscapers, and retailers all over California and the West.
Flora Grubb Gardens has become a beloved destination for San Francisco plant lovers, combining expertise in California's Mediterranean climate with artful displays and a curated selection of plants, pottery, and garden furniture.
FLORA GRUBB GARDENS
