In San Francisco’s Mid-Market district, a recent ceramics exhibition quietly reaffirms the area—along with its surrounding Tenderloin and Downtown neighborhoods—as vital terrain for building communal infrastructure. This Clay Too is the culmination of a series of open workshops where local residents, artists, and anyone seeking creative engagement were invited to reimagine art as a collective practice. Led by interdisciplinary artist Victor Saucedo in collaboration with Hospitality House and as an individual grantee of Galeria de la Raza’s Regen Artist Fund, the project embodies a shared commitment to embedding art within the everyday fabric of the city.
Based nearby in the Tenderloin, Hospitality House has been a critical resource for unhoused and low-income residents for over fifty years, providing shelter, advocacy, case management, and opportunities for artistic expression. Their Community Arts Program (CAP) maintains San Francisco’s only free art studio and gallery where artists and community members can create, display, and sell their work. Considering that so much of entry into the city’s artistic and cultural landscape is predicated first on access—whether to resources, education, or social networks—CAP offers an alternative vision of empowerment and inclusivity.
Exhibited in CAP’s window gallery on 6th St and Market St, sandwiched between businesses and corporate offices, This Clay Too reclaims one of the city’s most contested urban corridors. Its street facing installation blurs the lines between intentional viewing and incidental discovery, catching the lingering attention of passersby.
Featuring more than thirty works, the ceramics on display are varied in size, shape, and purpose. Some pieces appear functional, yet maintain their artistry. For example, David Arbuckle’s textured mugs evoke a tactile warmth with a touch of whimsy. A few are playful or lightly humorous; teetering between charm and absurdity, Colby Claycomb’s Kitty Melt depicts a cat breaking out of a dripping mold. Others feel ornamental, such as Midori Meissen’s delicate portrait of a woman, Kimono. Several more are conceptual or abstracted, such as Monte Pope Le Beau’s dual mask set, Beauty in the Imperfection, coated in a dark, ethereal glaze. Nearby, Izzy Davis’ Fourteen Thousand One Hundred channels the enormity of loss through sculpted cherubs—a somber memorial to a now significantly outdated number of Palestinian children killed in the on-going genocide.
The exhibition also features multiple collaborative glazed tile mosaics. Between varied brushstrokes, patterns, words, and textures, each tile offers a glimpse into what community members are thinking, feeling, and imagining. Above, Saucedo’s distinctive capital lettering punctuates the show. Spelling out the title, his own hand sculpted forms reflect the immediacy and sincerity of the project; their rough edges and uneven lines carrying the same sense of indexical touch that defines the exhibition as a whole. An inherently adaptable and highly resistant material, clay itself acts as a metaphor for the project’s SF-focused communal ethos. It allowed participants to engage directly in the generative processes of (re)building and (re)shaping—not only in a literal sense.
One of the more interesting aspects of This Clay Too is Saucedo’s decision to include a thoughtful selection of established Bay Area artists to exhibit alongside workshop participants. The blending of artists makes it difficult to tell “whose is whose,” and it doesn’t really matter anyway. Saucedo described this as a way to bridge networks and redistribute visibility. He recognizes that a single sale or connection to a donor, collector, or exhibition platform can be life-changing for some participants. Saucedo is always looking for ways to mobilize the arts for greater, more tangible impact. More than just a strategic gesture, however, this curatorial choice collapses hierarchies between “amateur” and “professional” artists, rejecting exclusionary notions of value.
The stakes of This Clay Too—and the dialogue it elicits—expand beyond artistic output. Though these neighborhoods have long, resilient histories of activism and mutual aid efforts, reductive, stigmatized narratives often frame the Tenderloin, Mid-Market, and Downtown solely through their systemic challenges—including homelessness, poverty, public health hazards, and an increase in commercial vacancies.
Meanwhile, as the city’s commercial ambitions aim to “revitalize” certain areas through a number of public art initiatives, police crackdowns on encampments are increasing in these districts, following the Supreme Court’s ruling allowing cities expanded legal power to enforce “anti-camping” laws.
Saucedo is acutely aware of the ways public art can be used as a tool for gentrification, as well as the contradictions that can arise from participating in the art world. Though he encourages everyone to be self-reflective of these complex dynamics, he also sees the potential of community based projects as an opportunity to care for, amplify, and meaningfully invest in the voices of people who have long sustained life in these areas. As he asserts, “art never left. It’s been here, and there are so many gems to discover. I hope to show that these neighborhoods are rich with talent, stories, and artistic innovation.”
The collective efforts of This Clay Too altogether propose alternative visions of the future, where art and art-making retain their revolutionary, world-building potential. Through its boundary-blurring approach, the project suggests the power of creative expression as an active, catalyzing agent for renewal and transformation.
This Clay Too: Exhibition by ReGen artist Victor Saucedo
Galería de la Raza, San Francisco, CA
November 7, 2024 – November 27, 2024