All photographs by David Duckworth. A small sampling of work created in the city of San Francisco at the beginning of shelter-in-place policies. Author hopes to present many more images on a future platform.

Geography is a contested space between various groups. This was none more so apparent than when businesses within the city of San Francisco shuttered their doors and windows following a directive from the County of San Francisco and five other San Francisco Bay Area counties to follow shelter-in-place policies that began on Monday, March 16, 2020.

My workplace shut down that week. I was fortunate that I remained employed and that my employer continued to pay its employees. So many other people were not so fortunate. Businesses that qualified as essential, such as food markets, hardware stores, and medical facilities continued to operate to a more limited degree. The city was eerily quiet. I began to document this experience using my cell phone.

The pandemic board art and, later, the parklet structures, were not an initial response to the closure of the city. But the boards were. They were installed as a measure of defense from the feared destruction of property that would engulf the city [1].

One of the earliest responses to radically altered public space was the appearance of graffiti, such as what I saw in North Beach where anonymous writers would spray walls with curt statements about the ills of American society. The first painted set of boards I documented was on April 13th. Graffiti tags were appearing on boards as well.

Within a short time formally painted designs began to appear on boards. Artists such as Nicole Hayden and Michael Ilumin were contributing a range of decorative schemes, from figurative to abstract, examples of which you can see here in the gallery. Jeremy Fish supplied North Beach bars and cafes with Stay Strong posters for window display.

In early April, Building 180, an art production and consulting agency, and Art for Civil Discourse (ACD), an organization dedicated to engaging communities in the production of public art, teamed together to launch Paint the Void. This collaboration raised funds for artist grants in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Over 100 murals, with grants to more than 95 artists, made possible artistic activity in San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland.

Project Artivism’s Restore 49 initiative not only secured needed funds for artists through mural commissioning, but also supported small businesses during closure with projects that could bring place of pride. This initiative is a collaboration between the community art organization Collective Action Studio, the San Francisco-based design agency Demirchelie, and the transnational organization Ueberformat. The more than 50 murals cover not just boards across business facades but also parklet structures.

100 Days of Action, an artists’ collective formed following the results of the 2016 election, initiated Art for Essential Workers with a focus on art addressing the role of essential workers during the pandemic. This effort brought needed funds to artists in San Francisco, with the organization moving to institute the same effort in Seattle and Austin. Art production in this case went beyond paint on wood with members of the collective printing out artists’ digital files and wheatpasting them around the city. The project evolved following public protest of the murder of unarmed and bound George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis on May 25th, with Art for Essential Workers incorporating racial justice themes in their work. Other themes in an expanding repertoire include health care, isolation, and community well-being [2]. (Liz Hickok’s narrative on the difficulties of placing political statements in the public sphere deserves a read; she documents the process for a cycle of three murals called Regeneration, which were placed in the Castro neighborhood [3].)

There has been a wide range of style, subject matter, and messaging in these murals. My observations note that labor and politics played a smaller role overall. Mel Waters’s mural Essential is a tribute to the critical role workers without political power played during the pandemic keeping Americans safe and secure, which you can see here in the gallery.

As much as this art has contributed to our collective well-being by projecting cooperative action, goodwill, hope, and affirmation into the public sphere, many works have been harmed by graffiti taggers and destroyed by other means, as can be seen in the case of Jocelyn Tsaih’s mural at Lukfook in Chinatown.

Additionally, a wide-ranging display of wheat-pasted art, such as Ricky Rat Comix or Luinova, has appeared without sponsorship, often without messaging about the pandemic, and like graffiti, subverts the role of public facades as emblems of social order and stability. This art can be caustic or frivolous, or playful and engaging.

Pandemic art has essentially not addressed pandemic homelessness. Perhaps because the crisis of housing is ever present on the sidewalks of San Francisco, and became increasingly evident during the pandemic as the city relaxed policing this aspect of public space, art could not project messaging about the matter on the very space occupied by the people it would reflect on.

The very first document I created with this series captures a letter from the hand of business owner Bruno Cucinelli, in the Union Square district, which had been taped for display at the business window. It read, in part: “…Every good sailor knows that a lighter boat is easier to steer; today, abiding by the rules of those who are responsible for our health, we have relieved ourselves of many petty habits that we perhaps believed to be indispensable to a happy life…In today’s suffering there is also the good of the moral reaction that will make us better, and perhaps tomorrow, when the memory slips away along with the suffering, we will come to the same conclusion as Aristotle, who once said that even calamities have a soul and can teach us a wise life…”.

Pandemic board art in San Francisco arrived at a time when our lives were certainly disrupted and our daily habits made trivial. And although American society did not achieve a collective assurety about mutual well-being during this time, the art present on boarded facades can speak to our best intentions and remind us that we can extend a heart to all in need and a hand to all who labor.

[1] J.K. Dineen, “Owners boarding up SF storefronts during coronavirus shutdown – the city is fine with that,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 24, 2020; https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Owners-boarding-up-SF-storefronts-during-15152302.php
[2] Emily Wilson, “With colorful street art, 100 Days of Action represents essential workers: ‘Open air gallery’ project by local collective employs artists, expands to include social justice issues.,” 48hills, August 11, 2020; https://48hills.org/2020/08/with-colorful-street-art-100-days-of-action-represents-essential-workers/
[3] Liz Hickok, Regeneration: 3 Murals in the Castro; https://www.lizhickok.com/castro-murals