As a child, Mario Alberto Silva had music all around him. Whether it was his mom playing the piano or his dad and uncle listening to tunes on the radio, he had earfuls of it at home. Growing up between 21st and 22nd on Bryant Street, there was Latin music blasting out of every window, rap music blaring from passing...
What is siblinghood? Or, rather, what is a sibling? Some define it as a people with shared parents. Others describe it as “someone to blame the broken window on.” Per a recent New York Times opinion piece, siblinghood is the source of a lot — I mean a lot — of arguments: three to seven of them every hour. For Becca Wolff...
Take a walk down Balmy Alley — between 24th and 25th on one side, and Treat and Harrison on the other — and you’re greeted with a synesthetic explosion of colors, shapes and stories adorning facades of old garages. Some of these murals are ancient, some are newer, but all of them tell the stories of Mission residents and tackle...
It was the fall of 1972 and the two-year-old Galería de la Raza on 24th Street had booked an impressive show for such a small gallery. Original drawings by Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros hung on its walls, on loan from New York’s Museum of Modern Art. No one came — at least, not the...
We received a tip this morning that murals along Clarion Alley were vandalized, and after checking them out in person we found that a total of four murals had yellow paint sprayed over parts of the murals. The ‘Narratives of Displacement’ piece was the main target and every face on it was sprayed with yellow paint.
Rene Yañez, an artist and co-founder of Galería De La Raza and the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, died Tuesday morning in the hospital. He was 75. Yañez had long suffered from cancer, and despite a short prognosis and intensifying symptoms, he continued to produce art until the end, showing it earlier this year at “Into the Fade” at the...
N. Pasquariello is a filmmaker and journalist, author of Sounds of Movies: Interviews with the Creators of Feature SoundTracks. H.P. Mendoza, an innovative award-winning filmmaker, composer, lyricist and actor, who lives and works in the Mission, sat down with me recently at Borderlands to talk about his new film, Bitter Melon, which will have its world premiere at CAAMFEST, May 12...
Last Thursday for Listen Local, we spoke with Stacie Powers Cuellar, the executive director at Brava, about new cabaret space at the theater — a miniature theater space that will feature music, comedy and live theater.
Off Top is growing up The Mission-based cap designer Off Top is growing fast – so much so that it’s finally getting its own space on the corner of 19th and Mission streets June 1. Co-owner Armando Ramirez, 29, said the move will allow the one-year-old cap-embroidery business to focus on its own branding. Right now, he shares a space...
Today is the final day for viewing art at studios around the Mission District. Doors will be open from noon to 6 p.m. (See venues below.) We stopped in at the Pacific Felt Factory at 2830 20th St. late Saturday, and discovered compelling work by a number of artists, including Brian Singer (someguy), Rodney Ewing, Beth Davila Waldman and Azucena Hernandez. Here are...
In 1981, when she was just 26-years-old, Barbara Carrasco was commissioned by the Community Redevelopment Agency in Los Angeles to paint a mural. “They said the theme was anything to do with Los Angeles,” she said. Carrasco worked for months on the project, consulting historians and researching the history of the area. She decided to base the mural on a...
A show exploring the work of René Yañez runs at the Luggage Store Gallery until March 31. Another celebration of Yañez will take place at a fundraiser for SOMArts on April 14. There will be a community meal and program honoring Yañez from 7 to 9 p.m., followed by a dance party with performances from 9 p.m. to midnight. Tickets are available...
There’s nothing in René Yañez’s playful and inventive art to suggest it’s the work of a man in his 70s — let alone that the artist is dealing with a terminal illness. Yet that’s precisely the situation at the second-floor gallery at the Luggage Store, where a show by Yañez opens Friday. Yañez, an artist, curator and co-founder of two...
A year ago, I became interested in photographing surfaces where juxtapositions of spilled or running paint, a crack in the wall, a streak of rust, a splash of water, a shadow, can create interesting and intriguing images — what I call unintended art. That’s when I came across 2205 Mission St., at 18th — at one time, an appliance store....
Some are pink, some are blue and some are orange. Some have halos over their heads and some are surrounded by stars and hearts of bliss. Some are tall, some are short, some are fat, some are skinny. Some even say, “Plug me in.” They hang out on mailboxes, walls, street poles, newsstands and wooden boards. In the Mission, they’re...
