art

From the ashes of the Tubbs wildfire, a Sonoma, CA community rebuilds it’s community through one man’s pottery.

The Bay Area is known for its mural art. Vibrant colors, intricate details, and a variety of styles tell the stories of San Francisco’s diverse communities. This summer a new mural in San Francisco went up. It’s called “Humanity is Key” and tells the story of an artist’s homeland: Palestine. KALW’s Mira Nabulsi visited the mural and talked to the artist behind it.

Several years back, Oakland artist Karen Seneferu envisioned a communal space for art made by black women. At the time, there were very few galleries in the Bay Area exhibiting black artists, and even fewer hosting solo exhibitions for them.

Oakland singer-songwriter Zakiya Harris performs under the name Sh8peshifter. She came to that name and her musical career when her personal and professional life fell apart.

Maybe you were among the lucky visitors to a sonic installation at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center a couple years ago.

About 750 incarcerated people have been sentenced to death in California. One of them is William Noguera. He’s a Colombian-American who grew up in a suburb of L.A, and he’s spent nearly 30 years on San Quentin’s Death Row after murdering his girlfriend’s mother when he was a teenager.

“Right now we’re standing in front of a more arid desert feature,” says my tour guide Darryl Smith. It’s an odd thing to point out in the middle of San Francisco — and the street sounds nearby don’t let you forget that you’re in the heart of the Tenderloin, but as soon as you set foot in this park, you know you’ve walked into a unique space.

In the gallery below his woodshop, master woodworker George Wurtzel has two portraits of himself on display.

An East Oakland warehouse is ground zero of a unfortunate standoff between art and marijuana. Over 30 artists are facing possible eviction, after a cannabis investment fund bought their building—one of Oakland’s oldest live/work artist housing.

Ramekon O’Arwisters is a fabric and social practice artist who likes to say he has “no reverence for systems of control.” He is best known for creating a series of public art events called crochet jams, where he makes a space for people to create a communal work of art.

For the past 58 years, the San Francisco Mime Troupe has been fighting oppression by creating socially relevant theater and making us laugh at the absurdities of contemporary life. 

If you’ve never seen the Mime Troupe, they’re not actual mimes. They use the word 'mime' in the ancient sense: to mimic. They talk. They sing. And they make a lot of noise. 

This year's performance, 'Walls,' asks: How can a nation of mostly immigrants declare war on immigration?

“Oh, my god!”

Erica Deeman gasps as she walks into her solo exhibition for the first time.

“Sometimes I have to pinch myself. It is the first time I’ve seen them all in a room together, all thirty pieces framed.”

Travelers at the Orinda BART station are in a hurry. They don’t seem to notice the abstract, multicolored, geometric shapes on each wall. 

If you’ve read the San Francisco Chronicle in the last 15 or so years, you probably saw something unique. Once a week, the paper published an illustration called “All Over Coffee” that showed a fresh view of San Francisco, accompanied by words of random insight. 

Is remix culture an exciting new development in the arts, or a sign that genuine creativity is dead?

In October 2016,  over 2000 people took part in more than 30 events across the Bay Area as part of the first-ever Reimagine End of Life Festival. 

This story is set to the music of Bay Area shakuhachi player Masayuki Koga, who runs the Japanese Music Institute of America. 

Where is the line that divides genuine art from mere obscenity?

"F*ck U, in the Most Loving Way" is an exhibition presented by the Northern California Women's Caucus for Art that features 52 artists, from performance art to documentary film. It was curated by Tanya Augsburg, a feminist performance scholar and Associate Professor of Humanities and Liberal Studies at San Francisco State University. 

Iconic dance troupe Dance Brigade is celebrating its four decades of intersecting art and social issues with the show Gracias a La Vida - Love in a Bitter Time. The evening will touch on everything from immigration to freedom of the press, all with the company’s signature blend of fierce dancing, taiko drumming, and a live band.

If you could see inside my brain when I was looking at a piece of art, would you know what it was like for me to look at that art?

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