Mini Mural Festival 2022

Day 1 of Mini Mural Festival features a group of artists, the last BFA/MFA students to attend the San Francisco Art Institute, who are developing, designing, and painting a mural collaboratively. All participants have had their work exhibited at the Diego Rivera Gallery on the SFAI campus and have special ties to Rivera’s frescos. These artists have taken Rivera’s message of unity into a contemporary timeline with an emphasis on climate change. The imagery in their mural is based on current findings and future possibilities, emphasizing hopeful outcomes.

Artists: Kristen Gundlach, Ujjayini Sikha, Katalina Prince, Bianca Lago, Patrick Kelley, and Grey Dey

What to expect: Throughout the day, visitors can also expect music (DJ Vampi) and food for sale from Rome’s Kitchen, as well as a few special offerings:

• Take a scavenger hunt through SFMOMA to find artwork by SFAI student and faculty alumni.
• Pick up and peruse a copy of the last edition of The Eye, the longest running student-founded and operated newspaper for SFAI.
• Take home a silkscreen print made onsite by the Mobile Art Share bicycle fleet with SFAI’s City Studio.

Kristen Gundlach is a painter, sculptor, and printmaker exploring spirituality, feminine constructs, and historical narratives, creating meditations of celebration and lamentation.

Ujjayini Sikha is a painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. She draws inspiration from the culture of the land of her birth, upbringing, and lineage (India); and having lived in the western world for more than a decade, she is influenced by the western art canon as well. Drawn to the portrayal of the feminine form, existence, and consciousness, Ujjayini’s work is centered around portraiture and women’s empowerment.

Katalina Prince is a multimedia artist who works in stone, metal, wood, paint, locally found objects, installations, cyanotype, sound, dance, photography, spoken/written word, and film. Her registered trademark logo, ‘Water we here for,’ reflects a dialogue between science, art, and culture, bridging an intent for community and connection.

Bianca Lago is an interdisciplinary artist creating visual language to communicate interconnectivity, the macro and the micro, and the general mystery that is our existence. Lago is an artist to watch as even she doesn’t know her next moves. They are, however, guaranteed to be entertaining.

Patrick Kelley is currently a portrait and mural artist who uses many different media to comment on identity and the narrations that bring life and nature together. Drawing along the lines of artistic and technical purpose, he explores the visual language between communication and thought. However, in practice he’s just in love with making stuff, bouncing ideas around the table, and seeing all our present future(s) being created.

Grey Dey has been a working artist in San Francisco for twenty-seven years. That time has been primarily devoted to figurative and portrait painting.

DJ Vampi is an internationally acclaimed DJ, party promoter, emerging drag queen, and host of San Francisco’s BIPOC LGBTQIA+ centered party mixing live music and drag, Batcave SF. Known for their unique ability to cross subculture boundaries and unite alternative scenes including goth, punk, cumbia, reggaeton, rave, metal, drag, performance art, and more in one night, Vampi’s legendary parties build tight-knit communities and border-crossing networks that support and center QTPOC experience in the SF Bay Area, broader United States, and Latin America.

City Studio is an award-winning San Francisco Art Institute program, now in its eighteenth year, that engages underserved youth in their own neighborhoods through sequenced art classes that are both rigorous and joyous. Taught by working artists who create alongside the students and extending its reach and impact through a range of organizational partnerships, City Studio nurtures a sense of self, encouraging young artists to find their voice; strengthening their conceptual thinking and foundational skills; and inspiring investment in a holistic creative life.

Amy Berk is an artist, art educator, and the director of City Studio, the San Francisco Art Institute’s award-winning youth studio program offering underserved youth high-quality arts education in their own neighborhoods. Berk taught at SFAI beginning in 2006 and served as Chair for the Contemporary Practice program from 2011 to 2013. She taught City as Studio Practicum, offering practical teaching experience to the SFAI student body, beginning in 2010. In 1996, she co-founded the innovative Meridian Interns Program serving inner-city teens and has taught in the Post-Baccalaureate program at UC Berkeley Extension since 2004. With Chris Treggiari she collaborates on ARTIVATE, creating opportunities for youth to explore art making and citizenship in the public sphere. She remains committed to giving teens (and adults) a much-needed voice, a safe place in which to speak, and helping them find the proper tools to do so.

The Mobile Art Share is a fleet of five bicycles designed and fabricated to collaborate with artists and organizations as a platform to tell stories and create original silk-screened posters in community spaces. The Mobile Art Share platform is open to collaboration and engagement with organizations, artists, and art projects, allowing the collaborator to customize their posters and messaging with their community, using the bikes as the catalyst to create. Originally co-designed by Sergio De La Torre, Chris Treggiari, Justin Hoover, and Gonzalo Hildago with a group of Bay Area high school students for the project Heros of Unity, the Mobile Art Share fleet of bicycles remains active working with various organizations, artists, and art projects, including collaborations with Activate, the Haight Street Art Center, and the Chinese Historical Society of America.

About SFAI

One of the country’s oldest and most prestigious independent art schools, The San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) led some of the most significant art movements of the last century — including Abstract Expressionism, Bay Area Figuration, Color Field, California Funk, and the Mission School — and has embodied the spirit of experimentation, risk-taking, and innovation. On June 30, 2022, SFAI closed its academic programs and campus. The passing of this venerable school is a loss for the entire art world, especially for SFAI’s friends, colleagues, and SFAI artists: its students, faculty, staff, and alumni. However, SFAI remains a nonprofit organization, and its Board of Trustees has created an independent nonprofit foundation to protect its name, archives, and legacy. While SFAI does not continue as a school, its spirit, embodied in its global alumni community and the new foundation for its archives, is unbroken and immortal.