Join us for a series of exhibitions celebrating Pride 2022!
The Haight Street Art Center is proud to present Radical Solidarity, a series of exhibitions featuring 3 generations of SF native, female artists; Mari Tepper, Tanya Wischerath, Abby Amdur, along with artists; Shyama Kuver, Julio Salgado, Sophia Zarders, and Steph Kudisch. Radical Solidarity is a series of openings and programs that celebrate Pride 2022 June-July.
As the first comprehensive survey of San Francisco-born artist Mari Tepper, Laying it on the Line explores the artist’s lifelong commitment to social justice and equal rights, whether it’s to celebrate one’s sexuality or advocate for access to housing and mental-health care. Best known for her “Hallelujah The Pill!!” poster of 1967, as well as a pair of rock posters she designed for Bill Graham in 1968, Tepper’s drawings, works of graphic art, and sculptures of the last half century reveal an artist who is not afraid to speak her mind via the tools available to her at the moment, from ultra-fine Rapidographs to sculptural bread dough. Running like a thread through all of Tepper’s work is her fascination and facility with line, in which figures are suddenly animated due to what sometimes seem mere squiggles from the end of her pen. In short, an appreciation of this important artist is long overdue; the Haight Street Art Center is proud to reacquaint—and even introduce—audiences to Tepper’s unique and singular body of work. Laying it on the Line, opens June 18th.
Tanya Wischerath has been drawing since childhood and focusing on queer themes and portraits since adolescence. Wischerath’s oil paintings and drawings are highly autobiographical, depicting an intimate and surreal landscape of gender fluidity and contemporary queer expression. Her work acts as a visual memoir and utilizes her surrounding community as models, their depictions vacillating between allegorical and personal. Broad Daylight, is a collection of large mixed media paintings on paper depicting a cultural landscape of queer spaces in the Mission District. Funneling the memory of queer spaces past into the depictions of the ones that remain, these paintings are both personal memoir and testimonies to the energy and atmosphere of the queer bar in a series of oil paintings. Broad Daylight, opens June 23rd.
Abby Amdur, born and raised in SF, committed to an art practice at an early age; in 8th grade she decided to leave home to attend an arts academy far away. Recently graduated from Interlochen Arts Academy, Amdur will continue her arts education in fine art and printmaking by attending the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY in the fall. In Normalizing the Feminine Form, HSAC presents her thesis exhibition where she explores alternative perspectives of the female form through printmaking and fiber arts. Keen awareness and intentionality are characteristics in Amdur’s use of materials to produce artworks depicting the female figure that also confront social constructs and both question and challenge society’s perspectives on gender. Abby is part of the HSAC Emerging Pride Artist program which supports the growth of young, queer identified artists.
As part of our Pride celebration, Collective Action Now! we will be exhibiting the poster work of Shyama Kuver, Julio Salgado, Sophia Zarders, and Steph Kudisch. With art that maps queer and trans histories of resilience, as well as empowers present day undocumented communities and explores notions of queer transcendence, the artists' works are a reflection of the diverse challenges we face as a community in 2022, and our united response in art. The artists will be exhibiting their work in our Print Studio Gallery along with an opportunity for attendees to pull their own screen prints as part of our Collective Action Now! event on June 23rd when HSAC will open our screen-printing studio to the general-public to learn more about the screen-printing process, have the chance to reproduce posters to take home created by our Collective Action Now! artists, and join in the shared activism of the moment.