Art Yap

BOGO tickets for Manning with code: YAPPERSWelcome back to Art Yap, where I gab, gossip, and otherwise chitchat with San Francisco Bay Area arts and culture baddies about how they build community through creativity. I'm your host, Shawna Vesco Ahern.Today I'm sitting down with two people who go way back — like, high school musical, grew-up-in-Maryland, performing in-Hair-together way back. Nailah Harper-Malveaux is co-executive director of Crowded Fire, a Bay Area theater company that's been making fierce, boundary-pushing new work for 28 years. And Adin Walker is a director and movement choreographer who's currently directing Crowded Fire's West Coast premiere of Manning, by Benjamin Benne.Manning is running September 5th through the 26th at Potrero Stage, opening night is Saturday, September 12th — and it is, hands down, one of the strangest and most beautiful loglines I've heard in a while. Two brothers and their father, grieving the loss of their mom, spread her ashes in the garden. And overnight, a five-foot zucchini shows up. it's an exploration of the mysteries of life, death, parenting, family, masculinity, and what it means to build a new emotional language for grief — because, as you'll hear, this script came out of the playwright's own decade-long, unprocessed grief for his father.The joy I found in grief was sitting with these two wonderful guests who have done some very deep thinking and intensive collective practice exploring the depths of what it means to be human. This conversation is such a good reminder of why theatrical explorations of imagery, movement, dynamics, and language are so important in your daily life—buy your tickets to Manning today, you don’t want to miss it. Let's get into it.

Before she was brokering multi-million dollar partnerships at SFMOMA, Suzy was training monkeys to play computer games in a neuropsychopharmacology lab. In this episode, she talks about her winding path from grad school research to Meals on Wheels to Macy's parade sponsorships to finally landing her dream job at SFMOMA — and how she uses psychology, listening, and a little bit of "yenta" energy to match brands with the museum in ways that actually feel authentic. Plus: her two Border Collies, the Google.org gift behind the Ruth Asawa show, and why she thinks San Francisco's creative energy is alive and well.

Today's guest is Demetri Broxton, someone who I think practices radical attention in his artistic practice as well as in his general disposition toward the creative community he builds at Root Division as executive director. Demetri is an Oakland-born artist who takes photographs of ancestors, some named, some lost to time, and brings them back through an act of almost impossible attention.Bead by bead, stitch by stitch, he places them into futures they were never allowed to have. His work is in the collection of the de Young, and right now he is having a moment. His very first museum solo at MOAD and a public art piece going up in the community where his own family put down roots. We sat together inside an interactive art installation, fabric all around us filled with lavender, the warm air carrying the scent through the [00:02:00] whole conversation.It felt like the right place to talk about what it means to lead for other artists while keeping your own creative fire alive, what his family thought when he chose art over everything else, and what happens when a stranger stands in front of your artwork and starts to cry. This one felt like a conversation I needed to have, and I hope you feel the same way.

CCA — California College of the Arts — is closing. Vanderbilt University is buying the campuses. And decades of art education, community, and institutional memory are being sold off with them.In this episode, recorded at Goat Hall in San Francisco's Potrero Hill, I sit down with two people who lived it from the inside: Elizabeth Travelslight, who taught in CCA's Critical Studies program and was also present for the closure of SFAI, and Melissa Leventon, who has taught fashion history and theory at CCA for 27 years. Together they trace the risky financial decisions and leadership failures that brought the institution to this point, the history that gave rise to both CCA and SFAI, and what it means — for students, for faculty, for the Bay Area — when places like this disappear.We didn't plan it this way, but the conversation took on a shape of its own: part mass, part confession, part hail mary, and somewhere at the end, something like a benediction.SFAI is already gone. Now CCA. The question is what we're willing to lose next.

The night before Valentine’s Day, artists gathered at SOMA Arts to talk about saving the San Francisco art scene.It felt less like a policy meeting and more like couples therapy.In this special Art Yap episode, Shawna asks three simple questions: When did you fall in love with the SF arts ecosystem? What broke your heart? And why are you still here?From naked violinists in backyard performances to the grief of losing beloved venues and institutions, Dreamers & Lovers captures a city mid-reckoning. Artists reflect on open studios, weirdo energy, long-distance devotion, peanut butter budgets, and the stubborn belief that art is not ornamental — it’s essential.At the center of the night is a reminder: grief is a clearing. And if we hold our anger too tightly, our hands aren’t free to build.This episode is a love letter to the Bay Area arts community — flawed, fickle, resilient, and still here.Happy Valentine’s Day.

Today on Art Yap, I’m talking with someone whose mind seems to run on two beautifully interwoven tracks — sharp, crystalline analysis and expansive creative instinct. Lauren Frankel is a musicologist-turned-nonprofit-arts-worker-turned-data-nerd-turned-cultural-strategist, and honestly? She’s one of the most interesting arts workers I’ve talked to in a long time. She loves spreadsheets and opera with equal devotion. She brings order to artistic chaos without ever dulling it. She’s a systems thinker who never forgets the humans inside the system. I first encountered Lauren’s work live at a San Francisco Arts Commission community meeting and the more I learned, the more fascinated I became: her path moves from a scrappy performing-arts high school to studying music history at Yale, to working with the Kronos Quartet, to leading audience insights and impact evaluation at YBCA — all the way to her current role at AMS Planning, where she helps arts organizations and cities think about their cultural futures with intention and clarity.Her doctoral research dives into how nonprofit structures literally shape the music we hear today — not metaphorically, but structurally, financially, artistically. And her consulting work now lets her zoom all the way out again, looking at systems, communities, buildings, behaviors, and possibilities.In this episode, we talk about growing up creative; discovering musicology through a Women in Music class her piano teacher encouraged her to take; finding herself inside the very nonprofit structures she once studied; doing on-the-ground impact work during the pandemic; and what it feels like to help organizations design futures that give creativity room to thrive.Let’s get into it. 

In this episode of Art Yap, I sit down with Richard Koscher (RMK)--artist, filmmaker, creative director, and bold experimenter--whose newest project GHOSTS OF THE ICE asks us to look directly at what's disappearing. Using thermochromatic paint and custom-engineered frames, RMK creates artwork that literally vanishes with heat--mirroring the way climate change is quietly erasing the world around us. We talk about lost masterpieces, AI in art, raising creative kids, and why sometimes, making something vanish is the most powerful statement an artist can make.This episode is for anyone using creativity to navigate complexity--where imagination isn't an escape, but a strategy. 

Today’s guest is Connie Wurz (formerly Connie Wood), Curator in Charge of Graphic Design at the SFO Museum—and someone whose work quietly shapes how millions of people experience art and information every day.Connie’s design work isn’t just beautiful—it’s empathetic. It meets people where they are: in motion, in stress, in transit. Whether it’s a traveler sprinting to a gate or someone pausing for a quiet moment in an airport terminal, her contributions to exhibitions make space for curiosity and reflection.In this conversation, we talk about storytelling through design, how to build for diverse audiences, and how all the details matter and design is EVERYWHERE.Connie’s path—from her early love of photography, typography and wallpaper, to designing for one of the most unique museums in the world—is a masterclass in care, clarity, and creative leadership.Let’s get into it.

Today’s guest is Jackie von Treskow, Senior Program Manager for Public Art at the San Francisco Arts Commission.Jackie’s journey into the arts wasn’t a straight line—it involved mythical Asheville forests, fringe pirate radio, writing hard for SF from LA in a master’s program, and non-profit hustle.We talk about what it really means to make art public, how monuments shape our collective memory, and why humor and empathy matter as much as policy and process.If you’ve ever wondered who decides what art gets built in your city—or how those decisions get made—this one pulls back the curtain with warmth, humor, and a dose of radical honesty.Let’s get into it.

“A room without books is like a body without a soul." And honestly… a mall without art or bookstores? Same energy. Today we’re heading into Daly City’s Westlake Shopping Center—yes, my childhood stomping grounds—for a conversation about how community spaces can transform not just a neighborhood but a whole way of life. I’m joined by Raquel Espana, founder of the Peninsula Book Collaborative, a nonprofit bookstore and literary hub that’s making books, culture, and community connection accessible to North San Mateo County. We talk about starting from pop-ups, turning bookstores into living rooms, and why arts and culture are what’s saving our malls. Oh, and we get the eight ball’s blessing for their big fall fundraiser—so you know it’s gonna be good. Let’s get into it.