Saint Joseph’s Arts Society is becoming a SoMa arts hub


The pink light shining through the rose window at the Saint Joseph’s Arts Society has become as much a signature of the building as its gilt steeples. If the pink light is on, it means Saint Joseph’s, and its founder, Ken Fulk, are playing host.

As the converted Romanesque church enters its second year as a South of Market arts venue, it is rolling out a series of ambitious new programs, exhibitions and special events that are making the building a new hub for the Bay Area’s creative communities.

On Thursday, Jan. 9, Saint Joseph’s kicked off two days of events in collaboration with the Provincetown Film Society, including a first of its kind community forum aimed at helping transgender filmmakers and performers break into the movie industry. During this week’s unofficial San Francisco art fair week, the Carpenters Workshop Gallery (which is housed on Saint Joseph’s mezzanine) will be opening the new exhibition “Drift: About Nature, Technology and Humankind.” It will be the first major exhibition in San Francisco by Dutch artistic collective Studio Drift, and in signature Saint Joseph’s style, it will include two days of special events including a conversation Thursday and a late-night party Friday.

This week, Saint Joseph’s also announced an upcoming exhibition of work by multimedia artist Ashley Longshore that will start this spring, the dates of which are still being determined. The wide-ranging events are reflective of Saint Joseph’s flexible take on what it means to be an arts organization in San Francisco.

“One of the questions Ken has asked about Saint Joseph’s is, ‘What kind of container are we?’ ” says Saint Joseph’s Arts Foundation manager Aimee Le Duc. “And what are we filling ourselves up with?”

Among the plans Saint Joseph’s has in the works for 2020 is the launch of the new Saturday Sessions artists residency program. Beginning in March, accepted applicants will be able to use Saint Joseph’s for one-day access to the space, with no limit on the number of times they can apply in a year. The Saturday Sessions come as San Francisco artist Erica Deeman is finishing her time as Saint Joseph’s first official artist in residence. The residencies will be unpaid, but eventually Le Duc hopes to secure funding to pay artists.

Le Duc and Fulk both say that Deeman’s time in residence helped them see new dimensions to what the space could offer local artists. In November, eight of Deeman’s photographs from her “Silhouettes” series went on display at Saint Joseph’s, and for most Wednesdays during her residency, Deeman also used the space to host fellow artists, curators and collectors.

“As a working artist you have your community of artists, your galleries, your institutions,” Deeman says. “What’s great about this place is it sits a little bit outside of that.”

Saint Joseph’s collision of art, design and VIPs are ingredients that have made Fulk’s previous ventures successful.

The 54-year-old interior designer, author and special event guru has become a celebrity in the past decade, partly for the work he has overseen. Recent Fulk projects include designing the Lake Tahoe home of Instagram founder Kevin Systrom and Miami restaurant Swan (pop star Pharrell Williams is a co-owner), as well as his new stake in the iconic North Beach hot spot Tosca Cafe.

But Fulk’s 2½ year, $15 million-plus revitalization of the 104-year-old historic landmark Saint Joseph’s is among his biggest projects to date. For three decades after the Loma Prieta Earthquake, the building was empty and in need of a major structural upgrade. It is now a sparkling, restored space that houses site-specific art including Catherine Wagner’s photo mural “Sala dela Imperatori” and Darwin, Sinke and Van Tongeren’s papier-mache bear sculptures that flank the building’s columns.

Over the past year, Fulk says he and his team have refined Saint Joseph’s mission statement. It is technically two organizations: the for-profit Saint Joseph’s Arts Society and the not-for-profit Saint Joseph’s Arts Foundation. The society is supported by subscribers who buy into it for $12,000 the first year; their subscriptions entitle them to use a private member lounge located in the former choir loft of the church and priority access to programming and members-only events

The Saint Joseph’s Arts Foundation has been looking for ways to engage with artists more directly in its second year. Deeman was the first in a planned ongoing cycle of artists in residence. In addition to artist talks and exhibitions featuring JR, Tiffanie Turner and Christine Elfman last year, the Foundation also hosted its first fundraiser open to the ticket-buying public, the “Heavenly Bodies” concert with Audra McDonald in November. The Foundation is currently operating under the fiscal sponsorship of Intersection for the Arts until its 501(c)(3) application is approved.

“It’s both our greatest asset and greatest challenge that we’re not a gallery, we’re not a museum, we’re not an event space, we’re parts of all of that,” Le Duc says. “It gives us incredible opportunity to give us new programs and new ways of working with the arts community. The challenge is, it’s on us to tell that story.”

Fulk says that one of the things he’s focusing on more in 2020 with Saint Joseph’s is how to get the word out that the space and the art is open and available to the public.

“Perhaps at first people felt because I have fancy clients, this was a place only for fancy people, but that’s not who we are,” Fulk says.

Fulk says the risk of a space like Saint Joseph’s is that its size and grandeur can sometimes make it feel off-limits to the general public, which is not his intention. “I want people to feel it’s accessible. I think these one-day artist cycles take the pressure off people and it makes the space more accessible if it’s used like that.”

San Francisco Grants for the Arts director Matthew Goudeau says the Saint Joseph’s artist residencies will be important for the arts community, giving free space to artists when affordable space is hard to find. But he says merely having the space open is already a positive for the community after so many years of it being empty. “To have something like that in west SoMa, where art and culture is at the center, is good for the city, good for the neighborhood and a great opportunity for artists.”

For Fulk, the first year of Saint Joseph’s has been as much about learning as it has been about planning.

“After a year, I don’t know that I’d be presumptuous enough to say I know what the San Francisco arts community needs,” Fulk says. “I want us to be additive, and I think that fulfilling the original intention of the space is part of that. This was a congregation, a place where people came together. I think we can do good here and still have fun.”

Saint Joseph’s Arts Society: 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Friday. 1401 Howard St., S.F. 415-626-1089. www.saintjosephsartssociety.com

“Drift: About Nature, Technology and Humankind”: 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Friday. Friday, Jan. 17- Monday, April 30. Saint Joseph’s Arts Society, 1401 Howard St., S.F. 415-626-1089. www.carpentersworkshopgallery.com