Choice Cuts: Charles Blackwell selections from Hospitality House Community Arts Program

Exhibition Run: February 3 - April 30, 2022

Choice Cuts, on view 2/3/22 - 4/2/22 in the Tenderloin Museum gallery, is a group show curated by the artist, poet, and playwright Charles Blackwell that nods to the neighborhood’s jazz history and that music’s spirit of invention and collaboration. Featuring works by several longtime participants and  staff of the Hospitality House Community Arts Program--Zumani, Txutxo Perez, Gigot, Kate Laster, and Blackwell–Choice Cuts exemplifies the robust, resilient, and resourceful practice of creating in the TL, as well as CAP’s decades long role as a vital and wide open conduit into the powerful artistic and cultural landscape of our community. Join us for a virtual artist talk and open studio on 2/17/22, and for an in-person jazz happening on 3/17/22 featuring poetry and live painting performances by Blackwell and a small jazz ensemble–the inaugural event in the TLM’s Sounds of the Tenderloin live music series generously funded by Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. 

Well known for incorporating jazz music and musicians into his visual and practical aesthetics,  Charles Blackwell was tapped by the Tenderloin Museum to organize a jazz concert as an homage to the lively San Francisco jazz culture of the ‘40s and ‘50s, in which the Black Hawk was the Tenderloin’s most popular and storied outpost. In the spirit of the “jam session,” Blackwell will incorporate both his poetry and painting practices into the performance, responding to and providing visual accompaniment to the live music. To contextualize his performance and provide a perspective into his artistic practice and community, Blackwell curated Choice Cuts to showcase friends and fellow CAP artists from Hospitality House. 

Blackwell has worked out of the CAP studio since 2003. As a young man, his visual art studies at Sacramento City College were cut short after he fell down a steep slope, damaging his eyesight. Nevertheless, he forged ahead with his art-practice, using unorthodox approaches  to make his blindness “work for him.” Blackwell’s works are inviting ensembles that vibrate and swing with an original visual language of bold color. 

Like Blackwell, each of the artists exhibited in Choice Cuts play and push at the boundaries of medium, riffing and remixing materials and visual themes to create art that inspires and uplifts as their Central City communities face a range of socioeconomic and systemic adversity. A mixed media piece by longtime Tenderloin community member and activist Zumani exemplifies his focus on reclamation, upscaling, and those processes' transformative potential. A triptych of screen prints on acrylic by internationally acclaimed muralist, artist, and educator Txutxo Perez depict subjects close to Blackwell–jazz and blues musicians–and harken back to the early photography process of Daguerreotype. Artist and CAP studio assistant Kate Laster’s painted woodcut accumulates a tender witnessing of the love, loss, and impermanence of our relationships. Gigot’s colorful, Cubist inspired, wood and bric-a-brac assemblage pieces speak to his experience as a builder and reflect the unexpected potential and durability in everyday materials.

Blackwell says in his artist statement that “Art is not for mere capitalist gain but to provide inspiration;” inspiration often activates our capacity for change. While these recent years have taught us to accept impermanence, they have also underscored the importance of needing a baseline of stability, something that is not a guarantee for many who live in the Tenderloin. Since 1969, Hospitality House Community Arts Program has worked to establish and cultivate that baseline for artists and residents of the TL, Mid-Market, and 6th street corridor. Each year, more than 3,500 artists benefit from the free materials and space to create, house, exhibit and sell their artwork.

Tenderloin Museum is honored to host Blackwell’s work across several mediums–painting, poetry, and performance–as well as a selection from the rich artistic community and legacy of Hospitality House. To learn more or about or get involved at the Hospitality House Community Arts Program, visit their website here.