BLOG 8: The Red Poppy Art House

I first heard about the Red Poppy Art House through one of the sources I gathered on our first assignment. The Red Poppy started as an art studio more than 10 years ago and has now turned into an art and music space for the Mission community. Located on the corner of Folsom and 23rd Street, this small yellow building regularly hosts musicians, artists, film showings and youth art programs.

Julianne Quimby started as an intern at the Poppy in 2012. She studied cultural anthropology and history of art and visual culture at UC Santa Cruz and wanted to work somewhere like the Poppy that incorporated culture and arts. “I’ve always been interested in cultural diplomacy and bringing people together through art and culture,” Quimby said.

According to Quimby, the Red Poppy Art House makes an effort to reach out to long-time residents of the Mission as new people are entering the district. “We’re trying to make an extra effort to make sure we’re reaching those people as their other resources and relevant programing diminishes as new people are coming in,” Quimby said.

I was also able to talk to Indira Urrutia, the creative director at the Poppy who also works as an art teacher and a visual artists.Before working at the Poppy in 2012, Urrutia and her husband spent four years traveling the continent  on their bikes and photographing what they saw. She told me that her husband started the trip in Alaska and she joined him when he got to San Francisco. They spent the rest of the four years traveling through Mexico and eventually working their way to the very end of South America in the Chilean city of Puerto Williams.

Urrutia told me that at one point in the trip, she started to feel guilty. She felt like there was more work to do than just riding her bicycle and taking photographs. It wasn’t until she was invited to a school in Mexico to show her photographs and talk with students that she found a more meaningful purpose for her trip. What started as a photography project molded into an educational project. “I felt that education was the best way to give back to society,” Urrutia said.

We talked for more than an hour, covering what it was like being an art teacher and an artist in San Francisco with all the demographic changes that are taking place. As an art teacher, she sees a shift in the importance art has in an education. “It’s taught as something fun to do. It’s not thought as something important to do,” Urrutia said. Urrutia now comes and teaches art after school. She say that there is no creativity during normal school hours and that education has now focused on memorizing and standardized testing.

As for being an artist in the Mission, she said that artists have always lived off the bare minimum, often relying on low rent and cutting out things like health insurance or saving money in order to get by. “I feel like there are a lot of artists in the Mission that can live off their art, but not in the best way,” Urrutia said.

At the end of our interview, Urrutia brought up two well-known artists who are being evicted from their homes. Regarded by members of the community as ‘Chicano Royalty,’  Rene Yanez and Yolanda Lopez first got the first eviction notice last July. The artists were major players in the art movement in the Mission District. “Their story made me think a lot about me,” Urrutia said. Urrutia said that the future of artists really relies on fixing the “living situation” in order to keep artists from being kicked out of their homes.

 

Blog 7: The Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts

For my last article I will be focusing on art in the Mission District. One of the things that I love most about the Mission District are the murals that decorate many of the streets. From Clarion Alley, to the beautiful art work that covers the Women’s Building, the neighborhood is decorated with paint. I decided to head to the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, or MCCLA, to learn more about art in the Mission.

The center, which is located on Mission and 24th Street, is four stories tall and hosts an array of classes ranging from ballet folklorico and tango, to guitar, to screen printing and etching. The center also hosts a youth program and is a venue for art showings and music events. I was able to meet with Leticia Paez, who is in charge of Arts Education and Outreach, and Pedro Reyes, who works with events and media for the center.

They both emphasized the critical role that art played during ’70s within the Chicano an Latino movement in San Francisco. Mission Grafica is the in-house printmaking studio located on the fourth floor at MCCLA that was present during the Chicano and Latino movement and aided in making posters for the movement. “It was very political. That’s the bottom line. It was a political movement for Chicanos at that time,” Paez said.

Today, the MCCLA continues to run and aims to help people within the community through their different programs.“Its really important because the arts have been eliminated in most of the schools so they don’t really have that creative outlet in schools right now. A lot of the children lack anything that’s creative,” Paez said.

Reyes, who is a father, added that he believed arts was fundamental in creating a sense of community for children as well as teaching them about different cultures. Reyes was first introduced to MCCLA when his son went through the different classes and youth program. His younger twin daughters are now involved with the center and have taken an interest in ballet folklorico. “I think that it taught them that this is part of their culture. This is something that they can use to really empower themselves and be able to build community around it,” Reyes said.

BLOG 5: 826 Valencia

During the past few weeks, I’ve gotten to know a lot about the great organizations based in the Mission. One of the most impressive organizations is 826 Valencia, a nonprofit that works in aiding local kids ages 6 to 18 with literacy and writing.

To start off, 826 Valencia was co-founded by Dave Eggers in 2002. Eggers is a well-known novelist who wrote A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, for which Eggers was a nominated finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Eggers is also the founder of McSweeney’s Publishing which is located in San Francisco. In 2002, he opened up 826 Valencia after realizing that students don’t get enough one-on-one attention at school, that teachers are greatly outnumbered in classrooms and that he knew a lot of writers, journalists and editors that had free time to give back to the community. He decided to use 826 Valencia as a way to connect these writers and editors with students that need help in school.

After choosing the location and starting to get the project underway, it was pointed out that the area was zoned for retail. This meant that Eggers had to sell something to be able to occupy the space. In his TED Talks video, Eggers said that while he was reconstructing the space, someone said that the space reminded them of the haul of a ship. Then someone suggested to sell supplies to the working buccaneer, or pirate. And thus, the Pirate Supply Store was born at 826 Valencia.

The store is filled with fun knick-knacks like eye patches, pirate flags and treasure chests of different sizes. You can even buy a wooden leg for $75. The space invites interactivity and play with a fish theater that consists of three chairs and a fish tank, a tub of lard, dozens of cabinets that hide fun surprises like a wooden crocodile and a huge metal vat where kids can search for treasure like gold coins. What started off as a joke became an actual source of income for the nonprofit. According to the store manager, Caroline Kangas, the Pirate Supply Store also became a way to build connections between people in the community and the organization.

A huge pirate flag divides the Pirate Supply Store from the tutoring area at 826 Valencia. Here students can get help with any homework after school. 826 Valencia also has schools come on field trips where kids can have fun creating stories that are professionally illustrated and then bound.

In the TED Talks video, Eggers said that the organization has over 1,400 volunteer tutors on their roster. One volunteer, David Brownell, has been volunteering with the nonprofit for 9 years. Brownell told me that he once tutored a second grader who had to learn a list of vocabulary words for class. The student didn’t know any of the words because English wasn’t their first language. He remembers having to think of different ways to explain what the word ‘swan’ meant.

Best quotes:  

“My mother once told me the best way to get a kid to read was to give them a flashlight and tell them they couldn’t stay up all night reading.” – David Brownell (volunteer)

“Beyond all that, it’s all going to a good place. It’s not just money for money’s sake.” -Caroline Kangas (store manager)

 

Funny Signs

Tub of Lard

Pirate

 

Blog 3: Women of the Mission District.

This past week has been very exciting!

I was able to meet with Leticia Arce, who works at Causa Justa:: Just Cause in the Mission. It’s a non-profit organization that informs tenants and immigrants about their rights. Acre was very passionate about helping people in her community stay in their homes and didn’t buy into the argument people make when they say ” If you can’t afford to liver here, get out.” She believes that all people, not just the rich, have the right to live in the city. Most memorable quote: “When an individual or a family is pushed out of the community, people that have been living there for 10, 20 years. That’s displacement.”

I also had the pleasure of talking to Dolores Ramirez from the Mission Neighborhood Health Center. She started working there 44 years ago as a volunteer where she was a interpreter for Spanish-speaking patients. According to Ramirez, people in the Mission used to get healthcare treatment in parked trailers before the health center was built. Crazy!

Lastly, I talked to Mariella Salcedo who I met outside of the Mission Neighborhood Resource Center. The resource center provides basic supplies and amenities like lockers and showers for the homeless in the Mission. She was actually the one who approached me, asking me if I was lost. She told me what it was like living on the streets, saying that it was especially difficult for her as a woman. She wants to see a woman’s shelter in the Mission.  Most memorable quote: “They have all this money for construction but not for the homeless. And for a woman, it’s a lot harder.”

Although I talked to several other people this week, these three women really stood out to me. They all have interesting stories and taught me more about the Mission.

16th Street Mission Bart Station- This is where a lot of people hang out, either to wait for a bus or just to sit down. I was able to find four police officers patrolling right around the corner.

Mission Neighborhood Resource Center: The outside of the building. You can see someone’s cart on the lower right corner.

Taqueria Cancun- Me and my coworker needed a place to eat after one of my interviews. I got the “Burrito Mojado” which is a burrito slathered in spicy salsa. Super yummy!

I feel confident and I’m eager to keep the ball rolling!