Art against exodus: Four young San Francisco artists prove city’s creative spirit still thrives

ART AGAINST
THE EXODUS

four Young San Francisco artists Prove THE city’s CREATIVE SPIRIT still thrives

By Finbar LaBelle • Bay City News

Throughout its history, San Francisco has been widely known for its role in the nation’s cultural vanguard.

From the Bohemian poets, writers and artists of the late 19^th century to the Mexican muralists led by Diego Rivera; from West Coast jazz in the Fillmore to the expressionism of Richard Diebenkorn; from the Beats in the ’50s to queer art in the ’70s to acid rock, the underground press and punk, the city has consistently been in the forefront of artistic movements.

San Francisco has always drawn people with an adventuresome spirit to its far left coast, and this is clearly reflected in its art. Part of the attraction may come down to how the city’s natural beauty meets an urban buzz, with a diversity in both people and thought giving the town an almost ephemeral quality that nurtures and inspires artists of all kinds. Often, these include those who live on the edge of creativity. Think Jack London, Anais Nin, Kenneth Rexroth, Janis Joplin, and The Diggers theater group.

Today, some wonder if this is still the case, whether the city has somehow lost its creative flair as San Francisco struggles to define the era in which it resides and to determine whether art still plays a significant role.

It has become almost a cliché to say that it is not getting easier for artists to live in San Francisco. With rising rates of gentrification and the growth of tech in many forms, the art scene seems to have steadily diminished. And the appearance is not altogether deceiving.

A 2017 survey by the San Francisco Arts Commission found that 70% of the artists living in the city in 2010 had already left or were planning to move away soon. In the intervening years, the trend has continued — with theaters like the Embarcadero Cinema, art schools such as The San Francisco Art Institute, and a plethora of performance venues continuing to close.

And yet, the city has shown time and again that it is when artists struggle the most that art evolves and new forms emerge. And for those who venture beyond gloomy statistics and look to the many up-and-coming artists themselves, it is clear that San Francisco remains a remarkable source of creativity — that, for all its difficulties, the community is far from disappearing.

The following are four portraits of artists, all under the age of 30, who defy the downward trend, proving that art remains alive and vital in the city. Working across vastly different mediums, these creatives attest to the high level of originality that remains in San Francisco. They are not to be replaced by AI nor phased out by unaffordability, but remain with feet planted on the city’s grounds and their hands in all sorts of different projects.

While each of their formulas for success is different, a common thread unites these artists: a passion and need to create. Their stories prove that despite the odds, it is still very possible to be an artist in San Francisco.

CARIESHA NEWT

“There’s inspiration everywhere in San Francisco, and artists willing to guide you. As I go on creating, I’m trying to be that resource for other people.”

CARIESHA NEWT is a 24-year-old Bayview-Hunters Point native featured as one of The Shipyard Trust for The Arts’ latest artists in residence. She spends most mornings in the lucid light of her studio — converted from what used to be part of Hunters Point Naval Shipyard — looking out onto San Francisco’s stunning downtown. There she mixes paints for canvases of all sizes and lays graphic designs onto lighters, t-shirts, and stickers. Recently, she has been outlining her forthcoming coloring book, each page decorated with a different animated character reminiscent of one of her inspirations, Takashi Murakami.

The nonprofit Shipyard Trust fo the Arts (STAR) organization has provided Newt with 18 months of free studio space, but, more importantly, has given her, and many others, the freedom to conduct her life as a professional artist.

“I found art pretty much all on my own,” she began, “I started creating seriously during COVID, around 2019, after my great-grandmother had passed and I needed a positive outlet. Things just evolved from there.”

Newt laughed to herself when remembering that she failed most of her high school art classes at Terra Nova High in Pacifica. Today, she is commissioned by clients all around the Bay Area and sells dozens of pieces at the Shipyard Open Studios as well as various other galleries.

Newt’s life as a creative was jump-started with guidance from her mentor Malik Seneferu, a self-taught painter and community figurehead. Seneferu took Newt under his wing when, in 2023, he asked if she would create 20 pieces in two weeks for his upcoming exhibit with the Kuumba Collective. She made 22. Soon, Seneferu was talking to her about applying to the Shipyard Trust for the Arts.

“It took Malik saying, ‘You are a professional artist because you sell your work,’ for me to fully believe it. I’ve gained so much confidence from putting my stuff out there and receiving a lot of diverse feedback. Malik pushed me to do that.”

The pages of her coloring book are collaged over the front door to her studio, some addressed to “Ms.Cariesha,” signed in scrawled kid’s handwriting. Like many artists, Newt has a day job and is lucky enough to work closely with another passion of hers: children.

“I work for SFUSD at a school called Spring Valley, working with kids with special needs. This has always been important for my art because kids are so naturally creative. They keep me on my toes.”

Although Newt has several events coming up, including another open gallery at Shipyard on Oct. 18 and 19, her dream has never been about grandeur or fame. The dream is simple: “I’ve never really thought about making it, I’ve just thought about creating a lot of work.”

In the future, she would like to see her two passions come together to give children, especially those with special needs, an artistic outlet.

GIOVANNA LOMANTO

“This is a city where artists love art and love what they do. When you are looking for opportunities instead of the genuine connections you make when you are an active part of the community, that’s when you miss out.”

FOR 26-YEAR-OLD California-raised poet, Giovanna Lomanto, community is everything. With strong connections from Berkeley to Oakland to San Francisco, she has come into her power as a poet, drawing inspiration from her fellow artists. She knows that her ideal is simply continuing her life as is, only on a continuously growing scale — a life surrounded by fellow creatives who know they can create change with their art, if not for the world, at least for themselves.

“San Francisco is not a place that rewards career poets. Poets here don’t do it for the money, and frankly, there is not a lot of money to go around,” said Lomanto, who moved to the Bay Area from Sacramento for her undergraduate work. She went on to provide a lengthy list of fellow poets who don’t create for the accolades, before saying, “We just do it because we can, because we love each other, and we want to sit in a room and share our work.”

Only minutes into a conversation with Lomanto, she made a purposeful mention of bookstores, gallery spaces, presses, and youth organizations like Youth Speaks and Chapter 510, where she honed her craft during her time at UC Berkeley, majoring in English. Lomanto remained immersed in this vibrant art scene as she pursued her Master of Fine Arts at NYU’s Low-Residency program, choosing to attend virtually.

Similar to Newt, Lomanto’s trajectory shifted during COVID. “Paolo Bicchieri, a writer at Eater SF, got in touch with me to do a Zoom reading for him. After, I had this exhilarating feeling of being connected to writers all over the Bay Area.”

From there, Lomanto became a popular request, performing at rallies for the Stop Asian Hate and Black Lives Matter movements.

“It felt like I slipped into the right pocket. I ran into one right person, and they connected me to the whole world.” Her world has only continued to expand, and with three published books of poetry, Lomanto gave 32 readings in the Bay Area alone last year.

There is an element of social practice in Lomanto’s work that has pervaded the rest of her life. She has balanced a plethora of jobs — as a teacher, a subsidiary rights assistant, a volunteer at the Prisoners Literature Project. Recently, she began to see that her skills as a wordsmith can be applied to have a social impact in the world around her. She now works at a homeless shelter, still putting her writing to use, but within donor marketing for the organization. “It’s my favorite job I’ve ever had,” she exclaimed.

With the success she has found, Lomanto remains grounded and available to the community that brought her up as a poet. She speaks of “the virtue of being held by others,” and this philosophy is the bedrock of her creative process. “You have to spend a lot of time being quiet and listening before you can produce.” She insists that the true work of an artist is to be a student, emphasizing the importance of “taking classes, going to community offerings,” and then knowing the perfect time and place to share your work.

As Lomanto ended her conversation, she didn’t just leave an interview — she re-entered a world she has helped build and only wants to see grow — a world where she knows her peers by name and nickname alike, where she is both leader and learner, using her poetry as a conduit for connection.

JILLIAN A. SMITH

“There are so many things you can do to keep the dream alive. It’s been useful for me to find things outside of acting that bring me fulfillment. The other things you do in your life always make you a more diverse and interesting actor.”

JILLIAN A. SMITH took a circuitous journey to the theatrical stage, but it’s her range of experiences that allows her to make the art that she produces. Today, she has found a definite home in the world of musicals and splits her year between New York City and San Francisco, following the lead of each production in which she’s cast.

Beginning in her childhood, Smith trained for many years as a ballet dancer, something foreign to her family, who come from a long line of scientists and engineers. At first, dance was a way to release pent-up energy, but as she continued down a preprofessional track, her training took her as far as Moscow for a summer, where she studied at the renowned Bolshoi Ballet Academy.

And yet, something was missing.

“I started my journey in the dance world, but for me, it was always storytelling that I was in love with,” and by the time she had begun her studies at UC Berkeley, she could not stay away from the stage. Although she majored in computer science, she found ways to spend time auditioning for student-run theater companies, which eventually led to a minor in Theatre and Performance Studies.

Now, the 26-year-old commands the stage as the leading woman, Eliza Doolittle, in “My Fair Lady” at the SF Playhouse. Her prowess as a performer, from her singing technique to her portrayal of the protagonist’s iconic arc, reflects the dedication of a zealous storyteller.

The musical, adapted from a play by George Bernard Shaw, was originally inspired by Ovid’s Greek myth Pygmalion, told in his famous narrative poem The Metamorphoses. With ancient origins, the piece remains current, using humor to relay commentary on women’s autonomy and the performativity of social class.

Smith’s performance delivers comedy with a cockney accent and an impressive vocal range. She is always on the lookout for challenging roles that “up my own game and my confidence,” and has found just that time and time again at SF Playhouse, where her roles have included Bebe in “A Chorus Line,” in addition to several other theaters around the Bay Area.

Staying afloat financially is a prevalent concern for artists in San Francisco, and Smith has a viable plan for doing so. She also happens to be a software engineer at Twitch, splitting her life not only between two cities but between two careers as well.

Though sometimes viewed as a threat to art, tech actually serves as a financial lifeline for Smith. She is not the only one leveraging other industries to feed artistic dreams. Smith spoke of one of her castmates in “My Fair Lady,” who “is at Northwestern, for data science and dance, so she’s kind of trying to build that lifestyle for herself as well. This balance is an interesting up-and-coming thing I’ve been seeing more and more.”

Smith’s aspirations do not stop here: “I hope to help develop new works, and be on the production side of theater.” Smith’s future is full of a desire to diversify her work, hoping to star in dream roles such as Jane in Max Wolf Friedlick’s “Job.” Additionally she hopes to contribute to up and coming works on the production side of the stage.

When asked what advice she would give younger performers, Smith offered, “The path forward is different for everyone. Don’t let yourself get too bogged down in rejection. That’s kind of out of your hands.”

Closing out an interview, the actor gave this directive with a smile, “And whatever you do, keep allowing yourself to love the craft.”

KY SHIN

“There’s a magic that’s woven into the very fabric of San Francisco. You have to come here with a deep desire to be a part of the community while continuing to find your style and being your individual self.”

HAVING GROWN UP in the Central Valley, Ky Shin first visited San Francisco when they were 16.

“It immediately struck me. The city has a distinct visual language from the secret corner views, to the pastel houses, to the way each neighborhood shifts delicately into the next,” they said.

Two years later, they moved to San Francisco, where they majored in Film at SF State. Soon after, they found themselves enveloped in a community that has guided their trajectory as an artist.

Shin has cultivated an artistic practice since childhood; however, much like Lomanto, they felt that they truly discovered their voice and the people who elevate and challenge their work when moving to the Bay Area.

“I love what the city brings out in the people who live here,” Shin said.

Shin’s attraction to storytelling has, from a young age, manifested as work in narrative filmmaking and photography. “The visual has always had the biggest potential to be as close to the actual subject,” they said. “For me, it’s the most emotionally raw.”

This dedication to offering an exact image of their perception has led them to dive wholeheartedly into their art. Shin has been working solely as a freelance photographer and documentary filmmaker in both San Francisco and Los Angeles since 2020. Without a day job, freelancing has come with its own unique set of difficulties, especially, and not surprisingly, financial ones. For Shin, though, the full-time commitment to art was a necessary decision, among other things to focus on their forthcoming documentary.

Shin spoke to the difficulties of maintaining stability as a freelancer while focusing on this central project. “It has felt more like being unemployed over the last couple of years. With the documentary, we’ve gotten funding on and off, here and there. And so it’s kind of been short bursts of having enough money to survive while I also make this project and can pay people something, and then the funding dries up, and things stop.”

Shin finds it an easy trade-off to make for all of the artistic environments they have discovered. “I came to San Francisco, knowing that there was a richness within the people that live here.”

Luckily enough, in addition to their group of friends, most of whom are artists born and raised in San Francisco, they found Erin, an older artist who is the inspiration of their first feature-length film, “Nowhere Further West”.

Shin came across Erin while looking for a roommate on Craigslist, and their connection was immediate. They lived for several years together during the pandemic. Soon, Erin became the muse who formed the basis of Shin’s documentary.

They described the film as an homage to the artistic community of San Francisco, a message of uplift to all of the artists who have refused to go corporate. “It’s a love letter to why artists come to SF and what we find here.” The film poses the question of what it means to make it as an artist in San Francisco, and the true cost of following passion.

“We are two sides of this generational coin. Erin is 72, and I’m 26. I’m struggling just as bad as she is to make ends meet.” Having resisted “selling out,” both Shin and Erin currently fight displacement as the costs of living in the city rise. At Erin’s age, it is an especially formidable task to survive in one of the most expensive cities in the world with limited social security income, no pension, and the inability to retire.

The documentary navigates this unlikely connection and the inter-generational parallel between the two artists with the city as their intersection. For artists of every generation, the struggle has only grown more acute, casting a harsh light on the real cost of a life in the arts.

The film was born with a complete grassroots spirit. It has been of the utmost importance to Shin for the project to “have an impact on San Francisco, and that, to me, looks like involving a lot of people from all different walks of the community.”

Outside of their own work, Shin hopes to help usher in the next generation of filmmakers. This passion was perfectly channeled as they took on the role of editor and post-producer for Joe Talbot’s summer camp program, 48 Hills 24 Frames.

The camp brought on 71 children ranging from age 13 to 19, resulting in a 33-minute film. “As somebody who’s a lover of San Francisco and somebody who wants to see the art community continue to thrive, I was happy to be a part of the program,” Shin noted, adding with pride that some of the young people involved felt they had found their calling.

While all of Shin’s work is yet another reflection of the city’s vibrant art scene, it doesn’t negate the harsh reality of San Francisco affordability. Shin acknowledges the struggles, saying they sometimes fear having to move.

But far from giving up, Shin remains determined to complete the documentary in the city.

“Completing the documentary is the only way I see to honor what this place has meant to me. I won’t leave, even if I have to sleep in my car, until I’ve fulfilled that promise,” they asserted.

Despite the odds, in a true San Francisco anarchist spirit, Shin and other artists continue to find ways to make it work, even if it’s by navigating the cracks and loopholes of the city.

They know that art is a crucial element of culture in San Francisco.

For Shin, in particular, and even though each month presents a new challenge — with their building being sold, a freelance gig late on their payment, even having power turned off in their apartment — “It’s exhausting, but it’s worth it.

“All of us are fighting for a piece of this place, but that fight makes the city what it is.”