photo credit: Justin Chotikul
The renowned artist, scholar, and activist Theaster Gates once remarked that “sometimes the creating that [community planners] do is creating a platform that allows other creative people to pitch in”. For the past several months, I’ve witnessed such a dynamic platform firsthand, in a San Francisco-based cultural arts incubator sponsored by the Wildflowers Institute, a previous ArtPlace grantee, whose mission is “to help communities design strategies to adapt and sustain themselves over time”. Wildflowers invited me to participate in the incubator following a blog-post I wrote on their promising work in the Tenderloin, where they’d uncovered and identified the informal artists and leaders—or “hidden gems”—who understood the community, enshrined its values through a shared cultural language, and expressed those qualities through art and advocacy.
photo credit: Justin Chotikul
Hanmin Liu, Wildflowers’ president, often says “communities are like coral reefs: complex ecosystems of diverse people and organizations, clustered together in a shared habitat and adapting to the shifting local environment”. In this analogy, he and his partner, Jennifer Mei, are the deepwater ecologists examining how communities actually change and prevail over time. For several decades, they’ve dived beneath the surface, exploring all manner of diverse locales and discovering the critical mass of people “who share a common experience that in turn becomes an energy force for change”.
photo credit: Justin Chotikul
Their research has been particularly focused on how some low-income neighborhoods can harness cultural equity strategies without the benefit of steady revenue streams, professional services, or institutional support – case-studies certainly applicable to struggling communities across the country. In many instances, including San Francisco’s Tenderloin, they’ve found that this harnessing stems from the neighborhood’s “informal capital”—the relationships and activities that “form the network of support, care, and community that people rely on every day” as well as the “opportunities for people to engage in shared experiences and conversation”.
photo credit: Justin Chotikul
Author and journalist Gary Kamiya describes the Tenderloin as “the only part of San Francisco that remains untamed, its last human wilderness”. Indeed, a stroll through its six-block-by-six-block radius feels a world apart from the sanitized tourist sections and tech-heavy businesses ringing its borders. In such a dense neighborhood, the streets themselves become a shared common area—alive with artists, immigrants, eccentrics, and outsiders. The ‘word-of-mouth’ grapevine that Wildflowers encountered was remarkably nimble and responsive—and often facilitated by the 600+ local artists who call it home. While lots of these artists were both self-taught and overlooked by outsiders, Wildflowers also found that many of them possessed a deep understanding of the neighborhood—a knowledge conveyed through their various mediums of choice, from painting to dance.
photo credit: Justin Chotikul
Intrigued by these findings, Hanmin and Jennifer set up a cultural arts incubator early this year, hand-picking a core group of individuals based on their artistic vision, collaborative work ethic, and remarkable personal journeys. They were curious as to what insights these artists had gained from their life experiences, and how that wisdom was expressed through their artwork. As the incubator progressed, common themes of ‘healing’ and ‘second beginnings’ began to emerge. Taken together, the artists’ stories of setback and self-discovery started to exemplify the resilience, humor, and resolve of the Tenderloin itself.
photo credit: Justin Chotikul
Above, Jesse James Johnson prepares to read one of his poems, in a rehearsal for the collective art-piece the group will be performing at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on December 7th. Hanmin and Jennifer initially established the incubator to explore the role local artists played in strengthening the core culture of a neighborhood. (By expressing a community's unspoken beliefs, this argument suggests, artists reinforce its unique values and practices.) Hanmin and Jennifer now hope that the upcoming performance will inspire a ‘ripple effect’ for other local artists and creative placemakers—with a low-revenue proof-of-concept that can serve as a model for similar communities around the country. One recurring motif I noticed in these incubator sessions was how the Tenderloin, renowned as a haven for society's outsiders, provided these artists both the space to heal and the courage to create. Here are the stories of three of them.
photo credit: Justin Chotikul
Perhaps no artist embodies the grit and hustle of the neighborhood more than Ira Watkins, a 75-year old self-taught painter and illustrator who’s lived in the area for over forty years. A conversation with Ira is a front-row seat to San Francisco history, replete with enough colorful characters and engaging anecdotes for an HBO mini-series. His story began in Waco, Texas, where he grew up with an early aptitude for drawing—practiced, at the time, on a chalkboard—and a keen eye for reading people. He employed this latter skill to practical effect throughout his life, whether shining shoes in popular business areas, selling his wares OUTSIDE the reserved booths at arts-festivals, or hustling marks in pool halls across the country.
photo credit: Justin Chotikul
In the early ‘60s, Ira was traveling with his uncle to Alaska in search of work, but a pit-stop in the Bay area was all it took for him to become enamored with the region’s iconic charm. San Francisco back then, he recalls, was “all warehouses and docks, one of those seaport towns you read about where merchanters jump ship”. Ira found the town a great place to ply his various hustles—from winning money in the billiards halls to befriending hotel staff for free showers and amenities.
photo credit: Justin Chotikul
Ira displays “Falling through the cracks”, one of many art-pieces directly borne from the Wildflowers incubator. The painting is Hieronymus Bosch-like in detail and scope, replete with all manner of Tenderloin characters, from panhandlers to buskers, schizophrenics to junkies, even Ira himself (in the lower left corner). The piece is a culmination of several decades of observation, beginning when Ira frequented the neighborhood in the early ‘70s, which at that point was a “lit up little Las Vegas”. At various points over the next decade, he spent time homeless, befriended drug dealers, fell under the influence of crack-cocaine, got arrested by an undercover cop who was “dressed like Michael Jackson”, and spent a nine-month stretch in San Bruno prison (for gun possession). His tumultuous life during this period informs many of the characters in his art—many of whom possess both an endearing tenderness and a defiant vitality. (In his words: “The homeless: they alright. They have peace-of-mind. To them, living on the streets is a stable life…so how can folks classify them as a nobody?”)
photo credit: Justin Chotikul
Above, Ira fixes a colossal mural he prepared for the Asian Art Museum, located in Civic Center, next to the Tenderloin. When he got out of prison, Ira discovered Hospitality House, a Tenderloin-based nonprofit that provides free arts-instruction and workshop for neighborhood residents. Before long he was volunteering as an instructor, eventually going on to teach disabled people at the National Institute of Art and Disability in Richmond, CA– a job he maintained for over a decade before returning to San Francisco “to create again”.
photo credit: Justin Chotikul
“Art gave me a foundation and a new lease on life,” he tells me, stooping to pick up a penny as we walk down Golden Gate Avenue. He shakes hands with various passersby and leads me to several areas proudly displaying his artwork, including a massive billboard erected in one of the neighborhood’s many community gardens (the mock-up of which is displayed in the first photo of this blog). “I feel like the city’s most successful broke person” he laughs, eyes glinting with pride.
photo credit: Justin Chotikul
“Art was the final piece of spiritual connectedness for me,” says Bisola Marignay, PhD, seen above bursting into song during one Incubator session. Bisola is perhaps the most versatile artist in the Incubator. She is a full-time educator at the California Institute of Integral Studies, as well as a writer, performer, playwright, and ‘therapeutic facilitator’. Though her background is in academia, art played just as central a role in her own self-development. The “fall” that Bisola describes in her own personal journey was from ‘the ivory tower’. As a young woman pursuing her doctorate in Chicago, she experienced a crisis of confidence and did not finish her dissertation. She found solace in music and worked all manner of odd jobs—painter, secretary, community translator—before eventually finding her calling as a facilitator, therapist, and teacher of social justice. Her passion and knowledge of Negro spirituals, in particular, added an enhanced dimension to her educator’s toolbox, allowing her to connect with students on a deeper emotional level. Upon moving to the Bay area, she began leading self-healing workshops—based around women’s issues—at GLIDE Memorial Church’s Women’s Center, one of the preeminent service-providers in the Tenderloin.
photo credit: Justin Chotikul
Bisola came to Wildflowers attention thanks to “After Angels Fall” a play she wrote about George Junius Stinney, a 14-year old African American who was convicted of murder in a racially-biased trial in 1944 South Carolina. She wrote the play at the organization Faithful Fools, which seeks to uplift residents in the Tenderloin through regular gatherings, workshops, activities, and performances. The play distinguished her as one of Wildflowers “Hidden Gems of the Tenderloin” – just one distinction in the remarkable life of this artist-scholar. I witness flashes of Bisola the playwright at each incubator meeting, as she chimes in with insightful thoughts on speaking cadence, blocking, and other essential stagecraft for the collective art-piece. According to her, art was both a skills-builder for meeting new people and a cathartic outlet. Expressing it with other people taught her that “I’m not alone in this”.
photo credit: Justin Chotikul
Bisola, second from right, facilitates a workshop examining the relationships of different forms of therapy (from ‘mindfulness’ to ‘compassion-based therapy’) with several students at CIIS. Bisola’s abiding interest in her Tenderloin art is showing the diversity of the place, and all the riches it has to offer. “I know what energies I bring to the unfolding,” she states, “and I know that—in the Tenderloin especially—the Recovery is as significant as the Fall”. While Ira has focused his craft on depicting the denizens of his neighborhood, Bisola uses it to facilitate workshops with residents discovering their identity, students exploring their research, and social movements dedicated to progressive causes (like campaigning against the death penalty).
photo credit: Justin Chotikul
Bisola listens intently to one of her student’s academic struggles. The themes that I’d witnessed in the incubator were underlined in her mentorship sessions, as she told the students “everyone suffers, everyone falls…what’s important is that you understand the role of suffering in your self-inventory so you can RISE from that fall.” For her, art is a process of ‘illumination’: “you’d be surprised how the little things—little accomplishments—lead to self-healing…that’s how I started to see who I really was—and what I was really capable of.”
photo credit: Justin Chotikul
“I resist codifying any truth,” says Tenderloin-based poet Jesse James Johnson, a self-proclaimed “economically marginalized, socially stigmatized, politically suspect Tejano/Chicano living with a terminal disease in San Francisco”. As he puts it, “if healing implies a ‘getting over’ or total recovery I’m not there....my story is less a ‘fall’ than a vision quest.” This notion of a ‘journey into the wilderness’ fits the community role that Hanmin described for me on our first meeting, where artists function like modern-day ‘shamans’. Jesse is soft-spoken, with gentle eyes that belie the fierce protectiveness he feels toward ‘the TL’ – a place he often characterizes as a ‘sanctuary’. We’re sitting in the Lafayette Coffee Shop on Larkin Street, one of the few mom-and-pop small businesses left in the neighborhood. Jesse knows the waitress, and, as I’ll quickly discover, most of the people dancing and chatting in the streets. It’s no stretch to note he’s a beloved local. “I’m very worried about [the Tenderloin’s] possible demise,” he says, as “my identity is tied up in it.”
photo credit: Justin Chotikul
Jesse reads from his poem “Fugitives” at an incubator session. Though he considers himself a die-hard Tenderloin native, Jesse actually spent the first 31 years of his life in a two-mile radius of central Texas. As a young man he studied under the famed Chicano poets Sandra Cisneros and Raúl R. Salinas–both of whom spearheaded a poetry of transformation, renewal, and social justice that has served as his lifeline and beacon ever since.
photo credit: Justin Chotikul
Poetry is what drove Jesse to become a community organizer—and what still drives him to join voter-mobilization efforts in the TL. Shortly after he moved to San Francisco, he fell under the sway of drugs, and contracted HIV. In his words, he “came to the Tenderloin to die.” But poetry pulled him back.
photo credit: Justin Chotikul
Jesse standing with Joe Wilson, the Programs Director of Hospitality House, an organization he credits with giving his life renewed purpose. He led a Hospitality House workshop for aspiring writers, one of whom eventually introduced Jesse to the Wildflowers Institute. Impressed by how Wildflowers ‘elevated the conversation in the neighborhood,’ Jesse took a central, albeit informal leadership role in the incubator. He was instrumental to drawing out the themes of self-healing and reinvention that were always present in the “Hidden Gems” project, though he’s still quick to bristle at notions of a ‘fall’—or any other term that implies the need of rescue. A lot of the people here, he says, were metaphorically “driving on a highway with no shoulder or exit. Like me they needed a controlled crash to get off. But they don’t need to be fixed.”
photo credit: Justin Chotikul
Though he’s quick to smile and prone to sharing laughs with many of the people we encounter on our TL-tours, there’s a melancholic undercurrent to his running commentary. The neighborhood’s unofficial slogan is “free to be”, an all-encompassing ethos that runs through many of his poems. But this inclusive spirit, he warns, is under increasing threat from rapacious politicians and developers, eager to snatch up the area’s prime real-estate. He mentions a sleek bar that used to be one of the community’s few gay establishments, and points to a modern cafe keeping its former mom-and-pop marquee—a ‘cannibalization’ he compares to ‘insects invading other insects’. “If I were younger I’d be breaking windows,” he jokes, as we march down Hyde street, leading a get-out-the-vote drive with fellow community organizers. It’s November 8th, Election day.
photo credit: Justin Chotikul
Though Hanmin and Jennifer identified over 650 artists who call the Tenderloin their home, art-studio, and creative well, they selected the handful of individuals for the incubator based on the respect and trust they’d earned by actual residents. And that’s because they view the incubator as more than just a platform to promote several artists’ work. Ira is quick to state that drawing is his personal form of ‘therapy’. Bisola recognizes the fact that employing Negro spirituals in her classes and workshops makes her a more effective educator. Jesse is more focused on the Tenderloin than his career prospects. As he puts it, “I’ve given up the notion of fame…I’d rather be a poet of the people.”
photo credit: Justin Chotikul
Jennifer records the TL-based singer Gayle Rosemond for her portion in the upcoming Yerba Buena performance. This collective art-piece will draw out themes from each of the artist’ work, to both illustrate important realities of the Tenderloin as well as illuminate what distinguishes it as such a special place.
photo credit: Justin Chotikul
Above, a snippet of the rough draft script for the December 7th event. The art-piece they’re working on seeks to underscore what makes the Tenderloin such a special place. For the incubator artists, the neighborhood is a haven for dissidents, underdogs, outcasts, and untouchables. Its slogan is “free to be” for a reason, as there aren’t many corners in America you can witness transgender activists mingling with Latino teenagers, or drug dealers happily co-mingling with first-generation Vietnamese elders hawking their wares on the street. Many places tout themselves as melting pots, but the Tenderloin is truly a plurality of diversities. Furthermore, there are few enforced norms of stratification or etiquette here, beyond a general distrust of authority—as Jesse terms it, ‘anti-fascist’ art—and an admonition to lend a helping hand to strangers.
photo credit: Justin Chotikul
The anthropologist George Foster noted that there are certain postulates, or unconscious premises, that actually unify people and organizations in a community through shared expectations. The TL, the artists in the incubator suggest, will accept you despite whether broader American society deems you ‘broken’ or ‘unproductive’. This is a place of healing, of second chances, of the shared, spontaneous joy shown (above) in an impromptu dance-party. Neighborhoods like the Tenderloin possess both a culture of tradition—exemplified in its myriad immigrant populations—and a culture of place—embodied in its vibrant arts scene. Unfortunately, new developers often overlook, minimize, or outright oppose these values. The metaphor of community as coral reef is particularly instructive here. Just as climate change looms over these vibrant marine habitats, the broader forces of involuntary displacement and non-inclusive development threaten the underlying character of diverse, blue-collar communities across the country.
photo credit: Justin Chotikul
Though the values of long-time residents and commercial outsiders can overlap—as many ArtPlace-funded projects have demonstrated—their goals sometimes directly conflict. Artists in the Tenderloin are banding together—without dedicated revenue streams, without robust institutional support, and with fewer professional services than needed—to make their voices heard. Will the TL incubator shine as an example of how to uplift the role of artists, forge sustainable solutions for community-driven change, and strengthen the neighborhood’s overall social fabric? As the marquee pictured above suggests: Time will tell.
photo credit: Justin Chotikul
You can witness the impact these artists are having yourself, by joining the Wildflowers at their upcoming event, A Night to Remember: Reinventing and Renewing Communities, on December 7th, 2016, from 6:00-8:30pm at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The event is invitation only, so please inquire at nectar@wildflowers.org.
This photo-essay is a follow-up to one of our August blogs, "The Healing Power of Arts and Culture: Creative Placemaking in San Francisco's Tenderloin."
Below are links to some of the organizations/ topics mentioned in this blog:
Bisola's academic paper on Negro Spirituals in therapy
The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts