November 14, 2024
Pemulis Water & Power

WAVES was the easy framing for this show. Something simple and marketable and obvious if you want to make your subject the ocean (Author’s note: That’s exactly what I wanted.) The real substance, however, and the material I wanted to convey in this collection, has been buried in the title’s street sign the whole time! AVES. The Outer Avenues. The City’s big weird suburb filled with nature and surf and great breakfast spots. A place San Franciscans only frequent for bonfires in the summer and ocean plunges during heat waves. But there’s so much more here that should be celebrated.

I was born and raised in the Richmond, and I’m privileged to call Ocean Beach my home. As I’ve changed, so have my surroundings. The storefronts look different and the fog isn’t nearly as thick, but the Avenues still mark the spot where pavement meets sand, where the Pacific tries to claw back bits and pieces of civilization into wilderness. These neighborhoods and their surroundings have so many different moods — even over the course of a single day — that it would be impossible to tell the full story without another few rooms to hang photos. So, 13 moments in time will have to be enough. The sunrises, the sunsets, the dunes, the swells, the Richmonders and the Sunsetans (I made up the last one) all have their own stories to tell, and I’m so excited to share them with you. This is what the WAVES — and the AVES — mean to me.