In 2005, 22-year-old Christo Oropeza had left college and was working at Just For Fun & Scribbledoodles on 24th Street near his childhood home in Noe Valley.
One day, as he was ringing up a customer who had come in to buy some paint, the customer saw Oropeza’s sketchbook lying on the counter, and asked if he could take a look.
“Sure,” Oropeza said.
The man began flipping through the sketchbook, looking closely at the drawings. Was Oropeza studying art anywhere, he asked?
Oropeza had been studying art at San Francisco State University, but struggled to get into the classes he needed, and enrolled at City College of San Francisco while planning his next move.
At this point, the man introduced himself. His name was Paul Mullins, he said, and he was an arts professor at San Francisco State. If Oropeza went to the trouble of going back to school, Mullins promised to help him get into two of the four classes he needed to re-enroll in the art program.
It was, Oropeza recalls, “the beginning of me formally learning to paint in oil and to draw.” It was also, he adds, a really beautiful moment. Once he was back in class, “unexpectedly, so many things sprouted.”
Seventeen years later, Christo — short for Christopher, or Cristóbal in Spanish — is the owner of Incline Gallery, a 15-year-old art gallery hidden on Valencia Street and tucked between Live Fit Gym and Bernal Cutlery.
A wrought-iron gate shields the narrow, sloped passage to the gallery from view of most passers-by. Stepping inside feels like climbing a gentle hill — what Oropeza has described as “The Mission’s Guggenheim.”
The space reveals itself gradually with exhibitions guiding visitors through a curated flow of artwork, each step shaped by Oropeza’s vision.
Upstairs, a workspace is filled with paint, brushes, stacked boxes and carefully placed Catholic saint relics: An imagen de la Morenita, the Virgin of Guadalupe, a Christ on a cross and a statue of Saint Francis of Assisi.
Among the objects is a self-portrait that captures Oropeza’s journey in layers. At the center is a pyramid, like the ones found at Mayan or Aztec ruins, a quiet nod to his roots. At the top sits a young boy: Oropeza as a child, painted with an open, curious expression. Below, two adult versions of himself face each other. It’s a portrait of duality — past and present, reflection and ambition — echoing the path he’s carved.
Oropeza grew up surrounded by art. Born and raised in Noe Valley when it was still a working-class Latinx and Irish neighborhood, Oropeza grew up in the multi-generational home that his grandfather and father bought after immigrating from Los Altos de Jalisco in Mexico.
Sitting around the dining room table, his mother would often take up a ballpoint pen and sketch on napkins. “Fíjate,” she’d say. “Así se hacen dos ojitos, dos orejas.” Look, this is how you do two little eyes, two ears.
Outside in the garden, she would draw his attention to the plants’ needs. “‘Mira, esta planta necesita esto…’ she’d say,” Oropeza recalled. Look, this plant needs this …
“She taught me to observe, to replicate,” he said. “There was patience in everything she did.”
‘It taught us how to build something real‘
After he graduated from San Francisco State, Oropeza and Brian Perrin, another student he met there, launched the San Pancho Art Collective in 2008.
The collective was a post-recession experiment that used vacant storefronts across the city to display work from emerging artists who had graduated from different city art schools: San Francisco State, City College, California College of the Arts and the San Francisco Arts Institute.
“It was a wild time,” Christo says, who also worked as an Exhibitions Program Associate at the SFMOMA to help pay the bills. “But it taught us how to build something real.”
In 2010, with Perrin (Shirin Makeremi, another S.F. State grad, joined the team later) Oropeza co-founded Incline Gallery in what was then a storage space. They envisioned Incline as a direct response to the dwindling of affordable art spaces in San Francisco. Incline makes a practice of supporting emerging local artists and prioritizes collaboration in the way that it shapes exhibitions.
Photo by: Daniela X. Sandoval.
The gallery actively seeks out work that is often left out of mainstream art spaces.
“Incline’s about making space,” Oropeza says. “And giving artists a platform without gatekeeping.”
The gallery’s next exhibition, “The Beauty That Is Left” marks Bay Area artist Nicole Andrijauskas’s first major San Francisco solo show. Drawing from a background of advocacy and representation in male-dominated spaces, Andrijauskas’s floral motifs and intimate portraits of women are as much about resilience as they are about beauty.
“Nicole’s been working really hard,” Oropeza says. “I’m proud of the work she’s doing. This show reflects the kind of intentional, emotional work we want to support at Incline.”
At Incline, Oropeza has found more flexibility than he had during his nearly two decades at SFMOMA. One day, he’s on a ladder helping hang someone’s show; the next, he’s in the studio working on a mural or meeting with artists to brainstorm upcoming programming.
He moves fluidly between roles — artist, curator, organizer — with a focus on collective effort rather than individual credit. That ethos comes through in Whatever the Work May Be, a series of paintings he made of shovels, hammers, and ladders — not just as objects, but as tributes.
“It’s about acknowledging all the visible and invisible labor that keeps culture moving,” he says.
“The Beauty that Is Left” opens at the Incline Gallery on Aug. 29 from 6 to 10 p.m.
Good story..i went there one time; it is really a destination, not well “advertised”, most people walk by on Valencia,not knowing the little gem at the end of the “alley”.
Incline is an institution in the Mission district and represents SF in the most amazing ways – through its deep commitment to showcasing highly talented local artists. The stories of the history here lie in their exhibitions and exhibiting artists. What a labor of love – thank you!!!