Opening Reception
July 11, 6pm-9pm
A free public celebration and opening reception for the Ducal Court exhibition, featuring original, multi-media portraiture paintings by Tenderloin artist Tim Snyder, as well as performances by the Ducal court.
In Aunt Charlie's Angels, visual artist Tim Snyder captures the glittery greatness of the Grand Ducal Council of San Francisco, a charitable organization that provides grants to communities and individuals who are often marginalized by civic fundraising structures.
On view July 11-28
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Visual artist Tim Snyder has been pursuing drawing, fashion illustration, and mixed media art since grade school. Snyder attended Art Institute of Pittsburgh (1977-1980), and worked in graphic design (with ad art in the Washington Blade), but it is truly clothing that gives him deep joy. Synder has been featured in SF Chronicle, and maintains a low-key celebrity status in local art circles. His recent exhibition, Family Jewels, was launched at Castro Country Club with a remarkable 13 out of 20 pieces selling. His forthcoming LGBTQ fiber exhibition at Green Leaf Gallery (in Beaver Meadows, Pennsylvania) is set for this coming Fall.
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This event is part of the Tenderloin Museum’s 2019-2020 public arts program about the pioneering drag queen performers at the legendary Aunt Charlie’s. Aunt Charlie’s is one of the oldest continuously operating queer bars in San Francisco, one of the last working class queer bar in San Francisco, and the last of its kind in the Tenderloin district. Our project aims to celebrate and lend visibility to Aunt Charlie’s as a remarkable space of socio-historical importance that is graced nightly by offbeat, eccentric characters whose seemingly idiosyncratic lives open up universal themes related to beauty, community, and self-acceptance.
Aunt Charlie’s: San Francisco’s Working Class Drag Bar highlights the work of numerous LGBTQ artists with a history of working in the neighborhood, and who reflect diverse approaches to portraiture: James Hosking, Tim Synder, Raphael Villet, Marissa Leitman, and Darwin Bell. In addition to launching their work as exhibitions, the artists’ work will be assembled into an original art book, complemented by oral histories, interviews, and a critical introduction written by Susan Stryker.
Our project hopes to draw into focus the Tenderloin’s low-income LGBTQ community, to reflect on the area’s history as a center of drag performance, and to engage the intersectionality of drag as it relates to questions of class, race, gender, and beyond.