This week: peak magnolia season, a library in the woods, fashion-forward utility wear, and the ethereal art of Christopher Burch. Also, local designers partner up with the NFL, the artist behind the Super Bowl 60 art, the return of Falafelland, and commemorating beans.

Field-ready type

Prior to kickoff, local artist Erin Fong’s hand‑printed artwork sets the tone for Super Bowl 60. Her bold letterpress designs now anchor the game’s official theme art, from digital tickets to printed programs, alongside a larger suite of hand-printed works honoring 60 years of Super Bowl history.

Fong produced the pieces by hand on a vintage Vandercook press, layering vivid color with wood type that carries its own quiet lineage. The full collection is on view at Moscone Center North during the Super Bowl Experience, running through Saturday. — 7x7

From trunk to sidelines

Nostalgia, the Bay Area streetwear brand co-founded by Jaden Yo‑Eco and Humbert Lee, is collaborating with the NFL for its Origins collection, timed with Super Bowl LX festivities. The duo went from selling T‑shirts out of a car trunk to designing pieces that reflect their Asian American heritage and Bay Area upbringing, blending cultural symbols with modern streetwear.

The collection highlights just three local brands. A handful of the new pieces will be available through the NFL Shop and pop-up events around San Francisco. — KPIX

Many-eyed stories

Christopher Burch’s portraits sit in a space between realism and folklore, grounding the viewer before slipping in something uncanny — extra eyes, symbolic hands, moments that feel both personal and mythic. Working across drawing, painting, sculpture, and music, the San Francisco artist uses these figures to explore shared memory, spirituality, and lived Black experience.

His new show, I’ll Be Back This Way, opens Saturday at Arcana with live music by The Revenge of the Four Fives, and his murals can be found around the city, including near Turk and Leavenworth and the African American Arts and Cultural Center. — Broke-Ass Stuart

Utility and craft

Shopping at Paloma SF in the Outer Richmond (formerly Hayes Valley) feels like stepping into someone’s well‑curated closet. Founder Laureano Faedi handcrafts leather goods under the SF Breakers label and designs the Gangs of San Francisco line, while also showcasing his favorite Japanese denim, workwear, and home goods pieces.

One standout includes a chore coat from the brand Tellason with a pocket that fits a full wine bottle — it definitely caught SFist’s eye on Instagram! Stop by the shop to see the pieces in person or explore custom items and accessories made on site. — Paloma SF/Instagram

Tenderloin homecoming

Billy Alabsi has worn many hats—limousine owner, blockchain developer, and restaurateur—before landing back in the Tenderloin with a new Falafelland. After losing his first restaurant and spending years traveling the country, taking odd jobs, recovering from car accidents, and even staying in a Los Angeles shelter with his family, he returned to San Francisco to open a small storefront.

His menu blends old favorites, like avocado-blueberry falafel, with new experiments, including a Dubai-inspired chocolate he’s been refining all morning. The shop carries ieces of Yemen and Alabsi’s boundless energy, while a city grant helped make this comeback possible. — Mission Local

Legumes as a lifestyle

In Berkeley, Madeline Schapiro, who goes by Bean Supporter online, has turned a nine-year obsession with beans into a public experiment. From her apartment kitchen to social media, she tests recipes ranging from red-lentil “gut bowls” to beanut butter cups, sharing both results and self-deprecating humor with her followers.

Her focus is practical, consisting of affordable, fiber-rich meals that support health and sustainability. Schapiro also hosts bean-centric meet-ups in Willard Park and partners with local organizations to encourage more plant-based eating, including work with Berkeley schools. — The Oaklandside

Magnolia season in bloom

The San Francisco Botanical Garden has entered its most colorful stretch of winter, with more than 200 magnolia trees flowering across the grounds. From the Himalayas to Mesoamerica, the garden’s collection spans dozens of species and cultivars, including rare and historic specimens like the Magnolia campbellii planted here in 1940.

Visitors can wander through the Camellia, Moon Viewing, and Garden of Fragrance areas while catching peak bloom, which the Gardens expect to last through early March. Sketching workshops and field guide sessions are happening this weekend and next for those who want to linger among the petals. — Secret San Francisco

Literary refuge in the redwoods

Tucked into the Big Sur forest, the Henry Miller Memorial Library feels like a place out of time. Visitors move from the art-lined path outside to shelves filled with books that were once smuggled into the country, settling into velvet chairs or petting the resident cat while the world slows down.

Sculptures like the “Technological Crucifixion” jolt you out of scrolling habits before you even reach the stacks, and inside, the quiet of reading takes over. The library welcomes families and travelers alike, offering a chance to linger among Miller’s works and the surrounding redwoods. — Travel Realizations/Instagram

Top image: Christopher Burch

Previously: Field Notes: Free Trinkets, Wild Garlic Season, Oscar Grant, and ‘Taking a Knee’ During the Anthem

Upper Market Gallery has opened virtually, with a real grand opening still in the works, and with a view toward tearing down barriers in the local art world creating new spaces that invite conversation and community.

Upper Market Gallery, or UMG, is a multidisciplinary fine art and design space founded and directed by Olivia Robertson, in collaboration with her mother, Ann V Capitan, and co-director, Nora Boyd. UMG aims to break down the barriers of the art world by focusing on community and artists, and “to connect under-represented and emerging artists with collectors in the Bay Area and beyond,” per their website.

Robertson, with a background in real estate brokerage and development, was always fascinated with how and why people occupy physical spaces. Privy to the glut of high-end housing she witnessed in NYC, she was constantly questioning how vacant and underutilized real estate can be repositioned and made useful by creative communities in need. By partnering with Boyd and establishing UMG, the two hope to fill that void and give their shared love of art a bigger voice.

“We want to make art personal, make it less intimidating,” Boyd told SFist in a Zoom interview. “We want to make art a social activity and not an intellectual one.”

Boyd got her BA at NYU and MA at Hunter college in New York City and has worked as an art advisor and educator for 7 years, specializing in non traditional artists and non traditional audiences.

“I just think there’s so much to be said for that type of art education, getting really deep into the theory and rhetoric around art,” Boyd says. “But most people, even most creative people, have no idea how to get into that world because it’s prohibitive, and the barriers to entry are huge.”

Both natives of the Bay Area, they grew up inspired by and bound to the creative talent overflowing around them, and were determined to work strictly with Bay Area creatives, specifically under represented and emerging.

In addition to showing indigenous artists and artists of color, who are left out of the story all too often, the two directors plan to use the physical gallery space to feature another demographic of Bay Area artists who are repeatedly omitted: our seniors. “Western culture is very into young people,” Boyd explains. “It’s not as focused on artists of an older generation.”

While originally slated to open in late March with their inaugural exhibition featuring sculptures by Robertson's mom, Ann V. Capitan, alongside paintings from SF artist vets Laurie and James Heron, the original shelter-in-place order forced the gallery to postpone and pivot.

Seeing an opportunity, Robertson and Boyd tapped their artist network to produce a curated online show and create limited-edition prints exclusively available through the gallery website, allowing young collectors to invest in a rare work at an affordable price and support the artist’s career long-term.

Through offering prints, which are much less expensive than original works, they can help young artists pay their bills and at the same time give collectors access, allowing the artists as well as the gallery to open up to a larger market and expand.

“We’ve expanded to the print drops because we want to be a hub in the bay area but also want to be connected to the larger art world,” Boyd explains. “We want to combine our networks and work directly with artists on accessible topics and a format that people can engage with and enjoy.”

Kimmy Quillin, Elliot Bamberger, and Anamaria Morris are the three artists being featured in the first curated online "drop." 15 percent of all sales proceeds will be donated to Destiny Arts Center in Oakland, CA, a 32 year-old organization committed to inspiring social change through the arts, serving thousands of youth.

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“We care about the art in this city and we want to focus on it and support it,” Robertson shares. “Every charity we work with will be a bay area based org, whether it’s art or social activism or environmental activism, what’s important to us is pushing the envelope in the art world in a positive direction and directly benefitting the people and the land that raised us.”

Boyd draws on her large artist network from places all over the globe, especially New York, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and China. Years of friendship with Robertson in NYC led to myriad discussions about art, in the presentation sense, how it’s accessed, what they would like to see in the art world going forward, and what barriers needed to be broken down. There was a shared vision of what an art gallery could be.

“There’s a ton of cool, super creative people here and for a lot of them, it’s really hard to know how to take part in the art world in the Bay Area because they don’t know where to look,” says Boyd. “We’re not making any assumptions about how an art space should be, what the art world is or is not, or how people want to engage it. We’re asking ourselves: What does it mean to provide space to artists? What does it mean to try and be a community hub? To engage young art collectors and enthusiasts? What it is they want to see and how do they want to engage with it?”

“Art doesn’t have to be this hoity-toity thing where you stand in front of each piece stroking your chin,” Boyd continues. “We would love to make UMG a place that hosts all sorts of creatives in the Bay Area -- we know that these creatives exist here in so many different fields, and if we take away those boundaries between those spaces, there would be real conversations. If you bring everyone into the fold.”

With such a long history of art, activism, counterculture, and food and wine in this city, Robertson and Boyd feel like theirs should be a space where creativity and conversation are brought together to become something more interesting, all the while supporting the artists and their communities simultaneously.

At the moment, UMG is not yet taking any appointments in their physical space, and exists as an online-only platform, but plans to host virtual events in the near future.

Follow them on Instagram here for updates.

2548 Mission Street, situated between the Alamo Drafthouse / New Mission Theater and the famed Foreign Cinema restaurant is, though a beautiful old building, not protected as a historic resource. Still, Mission Local was hopeful that a 2014 buyer of the space would preserve it, but now it's changing hands again and could be demolished to make room for — what else? — condo development.

That former seller, Collen Meharry, who also owns the Foreign Cinema building, turned down an offer from a restaurateur that was $400,000 higher because she "didn't feel that is the best group for that block." Instead, Rowland Weinstein, whose Union Square Weinstein Gallery at 383 Geary Street is known for its works by Picasso, Chagall, and Calder, won out, promising, and perhaps hoping for, another gallery along with “a bar concept,” on Mission Street, that he planned to open by late 2014.

“I just felt like having a nice gallery would be far better for people on the streets and tenants for them to come here.” said Meharry at the time, and Weinstein appeared to agree. "To some degree there has been a lot of arts that have been pushed out of the Mission District,” he said. “The big driving factor is to provide a venue which will always be about arts but also to encourage artist to continue to come back to the Mission. Hopefully it encourages other galleries other organizations to continue to stay.”

But Socketsite now reports a change in those plans. Weinstein, who purchased the property for $3.8 million, appears to have sold it to an LLC for $4.9 million. And "behind the LLC is entrepreneur turned real estate investor, Enrique Landa," Socketsite reveals. The space is zoned for 55-feet in height, so speculation about development is inevitable.

SFist has reached out to Weinstein and is awaiting comment.

Related: Peek Inside The Alamo Drafthouse New Mission Theater, Open Next Week

Want some surrealist pop culture with your serving of art this weekend? Look no further than "The Art of The Astonishing World of Art”, a solo show by artist Brandon Bird at the Gauntlet Gallery. Opening Saturday night with a book signing by Bird himself, the show will feature original works from Bird’s book, along with giclee prints of his classic paintings like the incredible one pictured above, which features Nicolas Cage in the warm embrace of what appears to be a japanese macaque.

"Northern California native Brandon Bird, has built a cult following with his creative paintings and drawings of historic and pop-culture figures in absurd and bizarre situations," says the gallery. If you come on Saturday night, you'll also be able to snag a copy of Bird's book, an interactive collection of drawings and paintings compiled in the form of coloring pages, stickers and pull-out postcards. See more of Bird's work here.

Gauntlet Gallery
1040 Larkin St.
Opening reception Saturday Sept. 21, 7-10 PM
Showing through October 12

Our very own miniature version of Art/Basel, dubbed artMRKT, returns this week in a somewhat larger form at the Fort Mason Center Festival Pavilion. The now annual contemporary art fair brings together gallerists from across the country, as well as a bunch of S.F. galleries both large and small, for a four-day orgy of perusing gorgeous things.

Things kick off with a preview night Thursday -- featuring Silicon Valley's power-couple Zachary Bogue (FAMSF Trustee) and Marissa Mayer -- at which serious collectors will vie to get little red dots placed on modern and contemporary artworks that they must have for themselves. The general public who does not wish to spend $150 just to look at art they can't afford can then go look at said art on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday for a $20 admission charge, and $35 will get you a three-day pass.

But we should mention that the Thursday preview also comes with an opening night reception, hosted by artMRKT and benefitting the fine arts museums of San Francisco. It will also feature an open bar and first access to the available works of art from more than 70 galleries, as well as entertainment from the award-winning SFJAZZ High School All-Stars Combo.

See the full list of participating galleries here, and note that it is pretty S.F.-heavy, with a special section devoted to Oakland Art Murmur galleries.

Also note that the popular ArtPad event will be happening simultaneously at the Phoenix Hotel, featuring hip and small galleries from S.F., L.A., New York, and elsewhere. Each gallery takes over a room at the hotel, creating a cool mini mall of edgy contemporary art. See that list of galleries here. There is also a VIP preview reception for ArtPad on Thursday night, and tickets for that are $125. That will feature an open bar and food from Chambers Eat + Drink.

[artMRKT]
[ArtPad]

by Micke Tong

Last week was Art Basel Miami Beach’s 10th edition, and after attending ten out of the eighteen participating art fairs, walking nearly 20 miles and visiting over 400 galleries, we were proud to see our Bay Area visual arts ambassadors well represented. We stayed on Collins street in the heart of Miami Beach where many of the art hotels took place.

A few blocks from us, Mission district’s Triple Base and Eleanor Harwood galleries were exhibiting work at the Aqua Art Hotel. A bit further down the street, NADA Art Fair (New Art Dealers) was happening at the Deauville Beach Resort, where local artist Andrew Schoultz sold out his framed gold prints of American flags, some inscribed with messages like “Handcrafted with Pride in China” or “Owned and Operated Since 2011 By China”.

Conveniently located around the corner from our hotel, The Catalina, was the convention center where Art Basel took place. The event was extensive with over 200 participating galleries. We were able to locate local high brow gallery, John Berggruen, where he showcased mylar and ink work by Julie Mehretu, Richard Tuttle’s simple wood and acrylic wall sculpture titled “Two with any to #1” and Rachel Whiteread’s minimal metal and plaster cupboard.

Basel’s Art Salon featured Jens Hoffmann, Director, CCA Wattis institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, in a panel discussion about Artworld Regionism. Following the many aisles of Basel’s art maze we happened upon Anthony Meier Fine Arts where Rob Reynold’s large painting of majestic clouds, reminiscent of a post card, read “BONANZA”. Around the corner hung a mixed-medium framed collage by John Baldessari titled, “Blue Abyss and Candy Mountain”. Newer works were also on display by Kate Shepherd. Her “Four Japanese Dresses” depicted a cut and tape screen print of four works on paper which added to the analogous shapes curated by Anthony Meier Fine Arts.

Scope Art Fair and Art Miami took place In Midtown Miami. Two enormous white twin tent structures lined the streets, a convenient location where the art fairs were adjacent to each other flooding the streets with art enthusiasts walking back and forth. We had planned our trip to Scope first since we had heard so many great things about it. Tracing its corridors we recognized the vast colonization of many Chinese galleries that were there. More so than any other art fair we attended. We couldn’t miss Jennybird Alcantara occupying the walls at Varnish Fine Arts, which was lined with dark feminine dolls. Opposite were the wild and busy paintings of Chris Mars.

Shuffling around we noticed White Walls had taken up a number of booths for artist ROA, who displayed dark paintings of caged animals as if they are ready to be shipped in wooden boxes. On the other side of the White Walls booth we witnessed lettering works by artist Eine and the luxurious gold taxidermy sculpture of Peter Gronquist. At the furthest back corner we reached Arts Fund, who claims to be a venture capital that invests in creative endeavors. We are happy to see that they invested in one, Brett Amory, a fine art painter who has made a statement in the Bay Area with his “Waiting” series.

While standing in line for our press passes at Art Miami, we ran into 111 Minna Gallery curators and artist, Micah LeBrun and Anthony Culmer. Although they had said that 111 Minna was not participating in this year’s fairs, it was good to see them dedicated to traveling so far to experience the decade old event.

Within the tent walls, we stood before the delicate paintings of Kate Eric at Frey Norris Contemporary & Modern along with a surreal sculpture titled “Underworlder” by Lionel Bawden, which depicts an organic melting subject made up of pencils, epoxy, incralac on black Perspex shelves. Moving from Geary street downtown, Frey Norris has found a new home on New Montgomery in San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Arts District.

No stranger to the Yerba Buena district is Catharine Clark Gallery. This season's San Francisco Arts Quarterly's cover girl’s inspired works included Walter Robinson’s strange double ended animal sculptures, two-dimensional vases by Stephanie Syjuco and an impressive dark metal gothic cathedral made up of bullets and pistols by Al Farrow.

A real treat for us was attending Miami’s fastest growing art colony in Wynwood. This district was lined with galleries, art studios, and art warehouses. Graffiti and street art littered the public walls and you could find artists spray painting these walls day and night without fear of any police backlash. We even found artists creating a temporary wall made of plastic wrap to paint on. The Wynwood district definitely tended to the younger hip crowd and collectors.

As we made our way to the Fountain Art Fair gates, we were warmly greeted by large wheat pasted murals by San Francisco’s own, Hugh Leeman and David Young V. We see much of their work plastered all over the Tenderloin district, two-toned images of elderly homeless types on patterned graphical backgrounds and of a woman in an occult draping headdress. Within the gates, Chor Boogie’s abstract mural could be spotted easily as his work leads us passed the stage where Fab 5 Freddy and VHS or Beta dropped records all night to a dancing party crowd.

Inside Fountain, the walls lacked any free real estate. Art was everywhere, from top to bottom. Kip Malone, band member of TV on the Radio, stood intently looking at art and it was quite comforting to see urban works by Eddie Colla and colorful abstract paintings by Carly Ivan Garcia. We have to say, Fountain Art Fair was the most social and friendly of all the art fairs. We frequented the neighborhood more than once before heading to Deuces, the dive bar in Miami Beach that so many say reminded them of home, San Francisco.

by Micke Tong

While observing Bay Area artist Scott Greenwalt's work, we can't help but imagine a real-time transmutation taking place. Humanoid deconstructed body parts, follicles of hair and organs are displayed with high contrast and a rich colorful palette. Scott shows us a very labyrinthine technique of paint strokes, which depicts polygonal shapes (plane figure that is bounded by a closed path) and branches of veins.

Like a mad scientist, Greenwalt's immense sci-fi inspired paintings reveal a complicated, yet contemporary look at what happens when your imagination runs rampant. “Something About Albert Hofmann”, stands out to define Scott's psyche, pulling numerous and quite elaborate elements into one cohesive subject.

Consecutively, for the past few years Scott Greenwalt has showed us a steady abundance of work that has not only entertained our eyes, but he also makes us ponder and converse about his irrational reality in his art.

The Alchemist will be open for public viewing in the Mission district's Gallery Hijinks (2309 Bryant Street) until December 17th, 2011.

Artist, designer, and art-lover, Olivia Warnecke, sent SFist her list of top gallery openings going on around town this month.

Olivia stresses that there is so much going on in the art scene that it's hard to narrow down. For a comprehensive list of happenings, stay in touch with Fecal Face, Alan Bamberger's Art Business Calendar, The Bold Italic, and SF Weekly.

by Olivia Warnecke

Hespe Gallery will have a winter group exhibition featuring the work of Kim Cogan, Mark Goings, Kevin Moore and Melissa Hutton. March 3 - April 2.
More Info | Facebook event page