Walking home recently after exiting the fashionable 24th Street BART station, your Bernalwood editor did a double-take at Mission Pie on the corner of Mission and 25th. As I passed Mission Pie (yum!) and looked in the window, I could’ve sworn I saw artwork by Bernal artist Todd Berman hanging on the walls.

I backtracked a few steps back to enter Mission Pie and take a close look. And sure enough, my hunch was correct: A big display of Neighbor Todd’s art really is hanging  on the walls of Mission Pie, and it looks glam-o-rama.

A few days later, Todd sent an email to tell me about the show. He also mentioned that there’s a reception for it happening tomorrow, Tuesday, April 26. Neighbor Todd says:

I’ve just hung a new show at Mission Pie. This is a special showing of the 42 foot long City of Awesome painting which you may have seen filling the inside of a Muni bus since October. I ‘d been selected to create original art for SF Beautiful’s Muni Art program. A jury had narrowed the pool artists from 135 down to 10, then the popular vote narrowed it down to five winners.

To create these paintings, I asked people at events, on the street, and in classrooms what they do to help make San Francisco so awesome, and to draw a picture of themselves in action. All of the drawings were then meticulously cut out by hand and collaged into paintings of neighborhoods in the city.

This is a panel showing the block of Mission Street and Crescent Ave (I live on Crescent):

Here’s another panel featuring Mission Pie and a view of our awesome hill:

There will be a reception on Tuesday, April 26 from 6 to 8 pm,, but the art is up at Mission Pie from now until the end of April, and this will be the only time to see it in it’s entirety.

IMAGES: Top, art by Todd Berman on display at Mission Pie; photo by Telstar Logistics. Below, artwork detail courtesy of Todd Berman.

Bernal neighbor Laurie Wigham is an artist who leads our local watercolor tribe. She often paints pictures of scenes captured around Bernal Heights, but this month she is displaying work that shows other parts of Our Faire City.

Neighbor Laurie explains:

I’m showing some of my work at a gallery in the Spark Arts Gallery (4229 18th St.) in the Castro. The show is “The Changing City: Painting San Francisco’s Changing Identity,” and it will be on display until April 28. The opening reception happens on Thursday, April 7 from 7-8:30 pm.

Throughout its history San Francisco has always been reimagining itself and trying on new identities. But right now there is a lot of bitterness and anger at how the influx of new tech wealth is rapidly remaking the city and displacing so many of the long-term residents (including the artists).

I thought it would be interesting to organize a series of sketching meetups in the areas which are changing most rapidly and to see if the process of sitting down to sketch the changes would make it possible for us to think more clearly about what’s happening. So far I don’t feel that I’ve had any great insights, but it’s been a good thing to be still and think while I draw. Here are a few of the sketches I’ve done.

Mission Bay: Until recently this old industrial waterfront area was mostly fields of weeds and rubble around scattered old warehouses. Overnight it seems to have filled up with blocks of gleaming medical research facilities, high tech businesses and luxury condos.

The Mission: This flat area in the southeast part of the city has traditionally been working class—Latino for the last half century, Irish before that. Many blocks like this one are still full of taquerias, murals and graffiti in colors that came from some warmer tropical place. But the Mission is turning into hipster central, and I did this sketch sitting in a new cafe and sipping a $5 single-source pour-over coffee.

The corner building below is still boarded up after a fire last January which killed one man and left 58 homeless. It was ruled an accidental fire, but there have been so many fires in the Mission this year, each one displacing more long-term low income residents and opening up valuable real estate for developers to build more luxury condos. The new condo building next to it, in bright yellows and oranges, seems to have been thoughtfully developed in many ways, and the New Mission movie theater next to it has been restored and reopened after decades sitting derelict, so maybe not all the change is bad. But every time I sit down to sketch in that area, people stop to tell me their stories about they or someone they’re close to has had to move.

Here’s the detail on the show:

IMAGES: All watercolors by Laurie Wigwam. Top, “Green Glass Forest”, somewhere aroung the Millennium Towers.

Bernal Heights artist Todd Berman has some of his work on display at Avenue, the event space at 3361 Mission Street near Virginia, just across from our Taoist Safeway. Tomorrow night, Wednesday, Mar. 2 from 7 to 9 pm, Neighbor Todd will be hosting an artist’s reception, and of course you’re so invited. Todd says:

The art don’t stop. That means I just want to keep filling up canvases with paint and filling up my closets canvases.

On Wednesday March 2, I’m having an art show at Avenue – that new and pretty little event space at 3361 Mission Street in La Lengua, across from the Taoist Safeway with the unobstructed views of Twin Peaks.

This show is part of a fire sale. I’ve reduced prices drastically for many of my paintings in an effort to make room in my closets. If I have to take the art back home, the prices go back up again.

You can find out more about the reception here, and all the art can be viewed online (and can be purchased via email as well).

I hope my Bernal neighbors can give these paintings (many of which are all about the awesomeness of San Francisco) a good home.

IMAGE: “City Commerce” by Todd Berman