From Oakland Grit to Chinatown Glam: Bay Area Artists Shine at SF Art Fair

Neon. Ceramic chickens playing chess. Giant, uncanny Barbie prints suspended from the ceiling, hovering above the astonishingly well dressed people who were at the Fort Mason Festival Pavilion Thursday night for the opening of the San Francisco Art Fair.

More than 20,000 people are expected to visit the city’s longest running art fair, which runs through Sunday. Visitors will navigate a labyrinth of almost 100 booths with art from around the world.

“Every gallery has a director within its booth and their entire goal is to talk to you — the potential fair attendee — about the art, how the artist made it, what their goal is and what it’s meant to inspire,” Kelly Freeman, the art fair’s director said.

This year’s focus is on the culture of the East Bay, with a special curation from Oakland’s community-centered pt.2 Gallery. In the gallery’s sprawling exhibit, curator Brock Brake will present works by fine arts studio Magnolia Editions, the Mission School’s Alicia McCarthy and Squeak Carnwath, as well as emerging Oakland-based artists, such as Yameng Lee Thorp and Soleé Darrell.

“There’s something special in the water,” Brake said of the East Bay’s art scene.

Brake said he grew up in Marysville, Ohio, “in a trailer park.” As a teenager, he was introduced to the Bay Area through skateboarding spreads and videos in Thrasher magazine.

“A lot of people come here to grow and find themselves a little bit more,” Brake said. “Oakland’s a really unique space and it fosters a lot of individuals who have a meaningful way of expressing themselves.”

East Bay artists were featured alongside standouts from San Francisco, including Jessica Silverman, who runs a renowned gallery in Chinatown. Her booth, titled “Beloved Community,” highlights primarily Bay Area artists, including Woody De Othello, Chelsea Ryoko Wong and others.

“If you decide to be here, it’s because you love it,” Silverman said. “When artists stay here, that kind of commitment to the city is felt, and reverberates through the community.”

At the center of the “Beloved Community” booth, a surrealist rendering of Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” bouquet — along with a symbolic, six-eyed silver moth — captivated Erin Zhao, a Mission Bay resident.

“I feel so much mystery,” Zhao said, admiring the painting by Mission School artist Claire Rojas, who lived and practiced in the Bay Area for many years.

Silverman credited recent investment in San Francisco’s art scene to Mayor Daniel Lurie, who she described as an arts patron and collector.

“He’s creating opportunities for conversations within the city that in my 16 years of business have not been had, that I have not been invited to the table,” she said. “I feel great hope for the direction that we’re moving.”

She continued: “But institutions need more support. We need more tourists to visit and to see how great the city really is.”

It’s never been easy to make a living in the arts, but Bay Area artists face the added challenges of exorbitant living costs, gallery closures and doom-loop narratives that scare off tourists. Brake said many East Bay art organizations are currently facing steep budget cuts, and sometimes total loss of institutional funding.

“Unfortunately, there are just not enough resources,” he said. “Right now is a really important time for people to really support those organizations before they’re not there.”

For those interested in supporting local or international artists — or becoming first-time collectors — Freeman offered this advice: Ask questions.

“You can collect at any level,” she said. “You just have to find a way in, and you can only do that by asking questions.”