By Rhea Kaur B
In early April of this year, a friend walked me down San Francisco’s Haight Street for the first time. He explained to me that, after many years, property values here were beginning to fall, due to an increase in remote working. In just one of many examples, The New York Post explains that ‘the San Francisco Four Seasons Residential, initially listed in November 2020 for $9.9 million, is now begging for buyers at $3.75 million — a jaw-dropping 62% markdown.’1 With the vast majority of the city’s population employed in office jobs, the ability to work from anywhere has left people far less inclined to buy a home that could be purchased for a lot cheaper elsewhere. Central San Francisco also has a lot less to offer, both recreationally and educationally, than comparable cities like New York and London; there simply aren’t as many Universities, art museums or active nightlife settings.
This phenomenon of professionals exiting Metropolitan areas had been described to me previously, always in a positive light; perhaps the falling prices of property could bring back the charm the city once had, before it was hit by gentrification. I had never personally witnessed this returning charm, but this all changed when, on a random street corner, we struck gold.
After a while of strolling, we stumbled upon an artist, who had created a makeshift gallery out of the back of his van. He displayed a neat line of paintings, using scrap metal and wood as his canvases. The lines were grouped by textural material and theme. Still at a distance, I observed a fascinating set of animal portraits, collectively titled ‘It’s a Jungle Out There’. I had never seen anything like it, and, of course, had to take a closer look.
On my approach, I was met by a man with an unmistakable voice, wearing an oversized, boxy suit, like that of The Talking Head’s David Byrne. With stencils and spray cans, he had embellished the faces of Madlib and MFDoom on either side of his lapels. Friendly and eager, he introduced himself to me: “I’m Tony, A.K.A Tony B. Conscious, A.K.A Hood Van Gogh.” The majority of his works were created in the same way as his decorated suit, resembling the graffiti that sits so prominently around the city. They also maintained a distinct palette, with bright colours cut apart by harsh lines.
These simplistic creations were not all there was to see, and after investigating them for some time, I found a couple of outliers within Tony’s collection. The most notable of these was a naturalistic acrylic painting on canvas of a clown in front of a sombre background, titled ‘Everybody loves a clown’ . Another that caught my eye was a piece titled ‘We can all fly blue’, a cubist-like creation that reminded me of the Microsoft Paint drawings that we all used to make in I.T classes in the early 2000s. A continuous black line had been scribbled over the canvas, with some small gaps left over: Tony had reworked these gaps, transforming them into halos with little smiles, above which the painting’s title floated.
He stood behind the little work station he had crafted, gluing magnets onto novelty Ukuleles. He explained to me that these magnets were his best sellers, and showed me the display board. The majority featured miniature records, with prominent black musical figures superimposed upon them. He then dove into the back of his van to show me a new Hello Kitty series that he had been working on; I took a particular liking to the one that depicted Jimmy Hendrix as a cat, surrounded by pink, fluffy clouds.
“How did you find your way into the art world?” I asked Tony.
TBC- “One day someone told me to start calling myself an artist and to sell my work, and it worked. I made artwork, I stuck a price on it and it sold. Sometimes you just have to go out there and do stuff. Y’know me now, I even have collectors of my work.”
Just as he said this a man popped out from the bar opposite. I had noticed that, during the short time that we had stood there, many people had paused to say hello. The tour bus drivers all knew him, cops crossed the street to greet him, and all of the employees of the neighbouring businesses seemed to love him. This guy, however, was different. He ran across the street to greet Tony, and explained that he was waiting for an Uber after an argument with his wife. In this moment, I felt that I was in the presence of a man who had made waves in his local community - the way he interacted with the people around him confirmed his power and status within the busy landscape, yet he remained humble. Tony was an open book, and people came to him, not just for his art, but for his advice and companionship. Coincidentally this man turned out to be one of the collectors that we had just discussed: he had purchased a piece from Tony the other week, and now it hung proudly in his front room.
After the pair spoke for a few moments, I turned back to the self-declared Hood Van Gogh. “Have you lived here your whole life?” I asked him.
“No” He answered. “I’ve been around, I’ve been to Vegas, Miami Beach, but most of all I love Australia. I want to move there, its all love - here I just constantly feel like people are trying to push me away. They don’t take me seriously, they walk all over me”
I looked through his collection some more, and I found a series that I instantly fell in love with, titled “No misogyny here”. It was a series of stencilled graphics, sprayed on vibrant, stretched plastic. I picked out the piece that I thought was the most colourful, and he stopped me to ask why I had been drawn to that one in particular. I told him that I liked the palette, and that it reminded me of Damien Hirst’s glazed spinning wheels, with their incredible melting effect.
“You’ve got a good eye. That one is went slightly wrong - the stencils wouldn’t do what I wanted them to do, but I’m ok with it, its unique”
I told him that I wanted to buy it, and asked him how much I owed.
In his sing-songy yet resonant voice, he replied, “You give me however much you want for it because I’m not misogynistic”.
Over the next few days of my trip, he was frequently on my mind. I came back to visit him the day before I was due to fly back to the UK. He remembered me, and gave me a hug and his card. Unlike most business cards, this spanned a sheet of double-sided A5 paper, and listed innumerable skills, including beatboxing, break dancing, and veganism.
We got on to the subject of music, and I told to him about what I listened to growing up with second generation immigrant parents in London, namely garage, grime, and RnB. He shared his own favourite artists, and then asked if we wanted to “hear some of his bars”. When we willingly obliged, he set up a backing track by Blue Lab beats, an electronic Jazz Duo from my home city. He then, with complete spontaneity, recited personalised lyrics for me and each of my friends.
TBC – “Off the top of the dome,
Like Micheal Jackson said you aint alone
Oh yes
And im just here to impress you
And let you know that im blessing you
You put me to the test
I won’t even tell you anymore cause you know the rest,
All you need to do is pick the beat and give me a tempo
Make it simple
And I won’t just do it for the dough
I do it for the cats who think fast
And for those who think slow”
It was astonishing to me that, during this brief encounter that we’d had, Tony had truly showed me the spark and charm that locals reported having lost. The glimmer of a pre-gentrified era shone through, in both his artworks and his person, and he brightened the days of all those who came across him, with his palpable love for life. In his makeshift gallery on the corner of Haight street, one man is making the change the city’s been longing to see for a long time. Even in a city that was hostile to ventures such as his, he has been able to create a name for himself in the creative world.
Museums across the West frequently push a certain notion of what is considered worthy of showcasing, with a heavy focus on art that’s worth money, or judged to be beautiful or desirable in traditional terms. Galleries are built like temples, acting as a space for rhetoric to be pushed onto the masses. This rhetoric frequently excludes the voices of marginalised and indigenous groups. Hood Van Gogh represents a group of people within the city who are taking the future into their own hands, initiating independent projects, and making sure that their voices are heard. If you don’t believe me, believe Bobby Seale, the co-founder of the Black Panther Party: the two discussed Hip Hop, Culture, Art, and Food, and, like many others, he is now the proud owner of a Tony B. Conscious painting.
Photo Credit – Elliot Possnett
- Fine Art America, Reprinted with permission from Tony B. Conscious