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    • Our Founders
    • Board of Directors
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    • Apply Here
  • Programs
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Art + Water is a groundbreaking art space and cultural hub dedicated to providing equitable artist workspaces, high-quality, rigorous instruction, and meaningful public engagement with contemporary art.

This initiative re-energizes downtown San Francisco by transforming a dormant waterfront site into a vibrant, inclusive destination for local artists and the community.

About Us

FORCED PERSPECTIVE: The World of Boots Riley

Residencies

Apply today!

SUPPORT

artpluswater

Residencies launch January 2027! Follow along here for the latest updates ⚡️⚡️

𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗵𝗼𝗿𝘁: Our pilot program will ru 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗵𝗼𝗿𝘁:

Our pilot program will run January through May 2027, with free studio access available through August 1 for residents who want to continue working beyond the instructional period.

Being part of a pilot isn’t a caveat. It’s a distinction. You’ll be the first artists through our doors, actively shaping what Art + Water becomes in practice, from how the studios function day to day to the rhythms of shared learning and public engagement.

This first cohort will work closely with our mentor artists, a group of established Bay Area practitioners whose work spans painting, drawing, public art, storytelling, and interdisciplinary practice. Through this model, mentorship is not abstract. It is built through regular, direct engagement, observation, and conversation.

You’ll be part of a small, focused group with real access to time, space, and guidance. This cohort will help define the culture of the space. How artists work alongside one another. How mentorship unfolds. How the public interacts with a working studio environment.

We’re approaching this as something living. Not fixed, but intentional. A foundation we are building together.

𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗵𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵 𝗝𝘂𝗻𝗲 𝟭, 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲.

Thank you for building it with us. → Link in bio to apply.

Special thanks to @kristinfarr for the rad graphic!
We’ve got news, and most of it is good! ⭐️ Our re We’ve got news, and most of it is good! ⭐️

Our residency is moving to January 2027. The buildout is more complex than anticipated, and rather than rush what we’re creating, we chose to use the time well.

𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝗻𝘀 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗶𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆. Artists across all seven Bay Area counties are now welcome to apply: San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Mateo, Santa Clara, and Solano.

Applications now close June 1. Interviews in July. Artists announced August 1. Residency begins January 2027.

Already applied? You’re set. Know someone who should? Please share this.

We’ve been building this for you. Thank you for building it with us. → Link in bio to apply.

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#artistresidency #bayareaartist
Thank you to @nytimes for this beautiful feature o Thank you to @nytimes for this beautiful feature on Art + Water!

The article gets to the heart of what we are building, an organization that takes seriously what artists need, and what a city loses when they are priced out of it. 

Wonderful contributions from our founders Dave Eggers and JD Beltran (@jd_beltran), head of faculty Ana Teresa Fernández (@anateresafernandez), muralist and teaching artist Jet Martinez (@jetmar1), co-director and curator René de Guzman (@instantlyrene), and co-director Nicole Avril, each bringing their own perspective on why this moment matters, what drew them to this project, and what it looks like to build something genuinely open, generous, and rooted in craft.

It is a story about access. About mentorship. About what becomes possible when artists are given real time and space to work, and about why San Francisco needs that now more than ever.

Applications for our inaugural residency are open through April 6.  Apply today! 

Full article at the link in our bio.
Meet the Artist Mentors: Ana Teresa Fernández Ana Meet the Artist Mentors: Ana Teresa Fernández

Ana Teresa Fernández is an artist of fluencies. A student of linguistics, she speaks five languages. An artist of border erasure, she elevates the intersectionality of place, person, and politics to create a common human vernacular. Time-based actions and social gestures are her syntax. Land, history, gender, climate, and culture are her subjects. Performance, video, photography, painting, and sculpture become her dynamic tools of grammar. She has created residencies and public work in Haiti, Brazil, Spain, South Africa, Cuba, Mexico & throughout the United States. Born in 1981 in Tampico, Mexico, Fernandez lives and works in San Francisco where she surfs and tangos when she is not working.

At Art + Water, Fernández joins as an inaugural artist mentor, bringing her interdisciplinary, socially engaged practice into dialogue with the program’s focus on environment, place, and access. She will work with emerging artists to explore how art can operate across borders, geographic, cultural, and conceptual, while grounding their work in lived experience, public space, and collective connection.
What does it actually mean to support artists? At What does it actually mean to support artists?

At Art + Water, it starts with giving artists what they need most: time, space, mentorship, and community.
Our residency is designed to support the whole artist. Residents spend the year deepening their technical skills in drawing and painting, working across materials, and learning how to build and sustain a serious studio practice.

Through our master–apprentice model, residents learn directly from established artists, gaining insight into different approaches to making, thinking, and sustaining a creative life. They are encouraged to experiment, take risks, and develop a body of work that is cohesive, ambitious, and ready to share.

But the work doesn’t stop in the studio. Artists build portfolios, learn how to present and talk about their work, and gain real experience showing and selling through exhibitions, open studios, and the Art + Water shop. They connect with peers, mentors, and the broader Bay Area arts community, forming relationships that extend far beyond the program.

They also contribute to something larger. Residents help create a space that is active, generous, and open to the public, bringing free art education and creative energy into the city.

By the end of the year, they leave not only with a strong body of work, but with the tools, confidence, and community to sustain a life in the arts.

This is what it looks like to invest in artists.

Applications for our inaugural residency are now open.

Apply by April 6.
Last weekend we had an incredible morning with the Last weekend we had an incredible morning with the Art + Water artist mentors. 

Our residency model is built around artists learning directly from working artists. Through a master–apprentice structure, residents will spend the year in close conversation with a group of mentors whose practices span painting, drawing, public art, storytelling, and more.

We’re honored to introduce the artists who will guide the first Art + Water cohort:

Kathy Aoki (@kathy_aoki_artist)
JD Beltran (@jd_beltran)
Ana Teresa Fernández (@anateresafernandez)
Paul Madonna (@paulmadonnastudio)
Jet Martinez (@jetmar1)
George McCalman (@george.mccalman)
Taraneh Hemami (@taranehhemami)
Travis Somerville (@thetravissomervillestudio)
David Wilson
Jenifer K Wofford (@woffsilog)

Together they bring decades of experience across studios, classrooms, museums, murals, books, and public projects, along with a deep commitment to mentorship and the Bay Area arts community.
Beginning in Fall 2026, twenty emerging artists will spend eleven months working, learning, and building a serious studio practice alongside this extraordinary group of mentors.

𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗰𝗹𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝗔𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗹 𝟲.

Learn more and apply at the link in our bio!
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Residency Opening January 2027!

 

Closed as we build

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Newsletter

Get occasional updates on artist residents, exhibitions, and free public programs.

Facets of a Healthy Art Scene — Renny Pritikin

A large pool of artists, a critical mass, a tipping point.
Teaching opportunities which help support the pool of artists.
Lively art schools that feed quality new artists into the pool of artists each year.
Studio space that’s affordable as well as live/work laws that allow artists to occupy.
Alternative spaces that give exhibition and residency opportunities for new art and artists.
Art dealers who support new artists, and generate support systems for them with sales, museum placements, and publicity.
Adventurous collectors who buy locally and buy new work.
Sophisticated writers to document, discuss, and promote new ideas.
Print and online publications for those writers to write for.
Newspaper reviewers who are open and talented.
Fellowships and grants available for artists and writers.
Museums that are accessible to new artists through committed curators who visit local studios and promote local artists with their out-of-town colleagues.
Interested audiences who attend all of the above and read about it.
Access to specialized materials or businesses (such as high-tech materials in the SF Bay Area, or the film industry in LA).
A community ethos in which new ideas are being generated about art, about society, about the role of art.
Hangouts, parties, salons, lecture series, restaurants, and bars where a sense of community is manifested.
Articulate artist leaders, heroes, iconoclasts, villains, and good and bad role models.
Artist-in-residence opportunities.
Progressive politicians who see art as a community resource rather than a potential target for derision.
Opportunities for artists to get involved in political campaigns and protests.
Opportunities for public art commissions (city or private).
Events that bring people together (scheduled multi-gallery opening nights, for example).

Art + Water is a nonprofit public benefit corporation, under the fiscal sponsorship of Hawkins Project. EIN 82-2406138.

All gifts are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. 

We honor the Ohlone Ramaytush people, the original stewards of San
Francisco’s waterfront.

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