“You, as a student, move to San Francisco from somewhere else, and you live in the city for four years. But how do you participate in civic life?” Sergio De La Torre asks, the professor of the “Artist as a Citizen” course in the fine arts program at USF. Students who enroll in this class have the opportunity to create art for non-profit organizations in the city, taking their talents to the streets.
“I think the class is trying to do that, trying to bring students to the city itself and make them participate in civic life,” De La Torre said. His aim is to engage his students in social justice and community understanding in the city through art. Dillon Ker, a junior design major in the class, said, “This is not a strictly art class, anyone and everyone can come collaborate, so we want to make room for everyone to express their own artistic things they like to do.”
This semester, the class is focused on partnering with Friendship House. Swapping their classroom of Studio 5 in XARTS, students meet at a little compound tucked away on Julian Avenue in the Mission once a week, which is home to Friendship House. This 501(c)(3) San Francisco-based non-profit organization helps individuals suffering from addiction seek solace as they undergo a holistic Native American healing process.
Friendship House, founded and owned by Helen Waukazoo, originated from her belief that the Native American community begins with both spiritual and cultural connections, according to their website.
The organization pairs traditional medicine from their ancestors and modern care to treat their clients. The non-profit reached out to De La Torre, and together Friendship House’s clients and USF students are planning to paint a mural, or public art as the De La Torre calls it, right in Friendship House’s neighborhood, the Mission.
The Mission houses the American Indian Culture District, which honors and celebrates Native American culture, especially within the city. “I think learning about Native American culture and working with a Friendship House has been really cool. I like talking to the people there and hearing their stories first hand,” Ker said.
In the initial stages of the course, the students studied the history of public art. Jay Stembridge, a first-year entrepreneurship and innovation and fine arts double major, said, “If you’re going to be making public art, you have to know how public art has historically worked in those spaces (rehabilitation and recovery).” They used this foundation to then start working with Friendship House via emails, and began drafting up some ideas for what they wanted. The students decided on a collage-style large scale artwork going up 55 Julian Ave in the heart of Valencia Street and the Mission.
When asked how they planned on carrying out the mural, sophomore design major Talisha Flores shared that the class-collaborated art piece would be a print on the wall. The class started by “just putting it on a photoshop file and then going through with printing it on a large scale, panel by panel,” Flores said. They split responsibilities into researchers, artists and group leaders, where they evenly split the workload with some in charge of delegation, others collecting research of Native American history and mental health, and others who actually created the art for the piece. “I’ve been painting a lot of water color stuff, we have some bead art going, some ceramic stuff working, and all of it is going to get scanned and placed into photoshop. There’s also a lot of photoshop on top too that we’re layering [over the art],” Stembridge said.
On Nov. 12, USF students held their second workshop at Friendship House with the clients where they talked through what they envisioned for the mural. They wanted to actively incorporate Native American culture in their piece, through quotes and phrases, patterns and textures, animals, plants and more. This filled Friendship House’s conference hall with shouts of “turtle,” “waterbird” and “wormwood,” as they pieced together what they wanted this mural to be.
“Last month, we did a workshop with them on erasure poetry, and you could just see their faces light up as they were doing it… being able to put their work on top of the mural too, and they can pick and find what pieces are theirs and what looks familiar, and there’s this entire piece of joy that you’re bringing,” Stembridge said.
This all routes back to De La Torre, as he guides the students through their ‘civic duty,’ and they tangibly see and feel the efforts of their art helping their community. “We try to be as collaborative as possible knowing that these non-profits have limited time and also knowing the residents are going through different stages of their lives,” De La Torre said.
