Arte Agora San Francisco
Pride Month love letter to the hilly city by the bay
San Francisco is one of our favorite places, and the densely-packed 7 x 7 peninsula is a prime gallery for the creative expressions of Arte Agora. Welcome to Arte Agora San Francisco, where we describe some of the predominant spots, forms, and methods we’ve noticed in our travels there.
Here’s a complete album of Arte Agora images I’ve collected there. Some faves:
Public Studio
The mild weather and tolerant demeanor of San Francisco is conducive to Public Studios, which are accessible places where an artist makes and/or sells their work outside. Market Street and The Embarcadero are natural spots for public studios on the edge of mainstrain regulated markets. Here’s some paintings propped up on the ramp to a Muni stop on Market:
The thing about Public Studios is you get to see real artists working in real time. Here’s a work on paper using housepaint that we bought while it was still wet:
Wood as substrate
This scaffold barrier from January 2020 ended up being an informal gallery for a number of artists, including Stikki Peaches out of Montreal:
I didn’t know the artist until this month, when we spotted this work on Milwaukee Avenue, evidently placed by the artist while they were in town for a solo show at Carousel Fine Art.
This is a ratification of my “shoot first, learn later” model of archiving Arte Agora :-)
Slaps
The SF sticker game is tight.
Words
Some art is simple expression of language. here’s SL with a quick-rip SF-centric admonition: “Fake is Real”
Wheatpaste
Here’s a great piece we spotted in Chinatown on a recent visit:
Objects
I’m particularly fascinated by the worldwide phenomena of affixing objects to buildings, poles, and infrastructure in the public way. Here’s a famous piece by Parisian street artist Gregos:
Art is everywhere if you see it.