Public Art
Tale Tumblers
2022, Commissioned by the San Francisco Institute of Possibility
Created by Kaytea Petro, Kelleigh Trowbridge and Julian Barber
Glazed Ceramic with Cobalt
Each is approximately 4” x 4” x 5” (Photos by Todd Seelie)
We made 100 tumblers with imagery derived from every line of the following poem by Chicken John and hid them around the 2022 Strawberry Moon Campout. The idea was that people would interrogate what they had found and why - thus wandering around and building community of conversation as well as a shared mythos.
Street Art: 2020-2021
The COVID-19 pandemic caused me to feel all the creeping emotions: paranoia, dread, distrust, loneliness, fear. I found it impossible to balance them out with joy, humor, punk-rock-no-fucks-given, fellowship. I noticed that street artists were wheatpasting art on the boarded up store fronts around my neighborhood, and realized that I could work through my feelings at watching my livelihood and world disappear, bring joy and humor to my community and use art to prevent vandalism in my community with some simple ingredients: flour, water, ink, paper.
Street art, wheatpasting, murals, this was all new to me. I draw with ink, but never at this scale.
What We Do for Love
2020, Commissioned by the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation
Acrylic paint on fiberglass
6’ X 5’ X 3’
Inspired by my neighbors walking past my house, wearing masks of various types, I wanted to capture all the life happening during the pandemic. Wearing a mask is a demonstration of love for people you don’t know; it is a profoundly hopeful piece of clothing. I personally have made over 2000 masks since during the pandemic; they make the community I live in (and some I don’t) safer and more comfortable.
Heart of the Man
2019, Commissioned by the Man Crewe
Glazed high fire ceramic with blessings
17” X 9” X 8”
Three hollow ceramic “eggs” were produced to be the heart of the Burning Man in 2019. Each piece had a design in it, in raw, unglazed clay; this was designed to absorb smoke to make the design appear. Before they were installed on the Man, Burning Man staff and crew did a ritual where they filled the eggs with their benedictions for the future. Since it was unclear if they would survive the fall into the inferno, it was a surprise to find some potshards after the fire.
Good Bones
2019, Commissioned by the Aquarium of the Bay
Acrylic paint on fiberglass
4’ X 6’ X 7’
Good Bones refers to the deep geology of California, starting with melted snowfall in the Sierras that rushes then trickles then gurgles its way down through rivers through the Delta to the Bay, picking up minerals and micronutrients unique to the terroir along the way. These make their way through the food chain and up into the apex predators - the sea lions - and form their basic architecture - the bones. The mottled sea foam green background of the sea lion refers to the colors of the roaring rushing rivers in spring in the Sierras, the lazy languid summer Delta and the color of the turbid bay water during a storm. The sea lion stands on a piece of Franciscan chert that forms the bedrock of the Bay.