San Francisco Sketchbook
It is hard to tell this story without it starting here: when I was in high school, I developed a habit of walking around and drawing what I see. I would draw the clock in a classroom, the lamp post outside my house, the old man reading in a cafe. I would write whatever was on my mind. I didn’t know this when I completed my first sketchbook, but these books would turn into my deepest practice of attention. While there was no goal to this practice, I found great pleasure in it. I have dozens of sketchbooks full of observations and drawings over the last decade.
This practice has been like background music: steady, unwavering, as I finished school, traveled, worked different jobs, fell in love.
This time last year, I was at a crossroads. A teaching job had just ended. I was weighing grad school offers at UChicago and Columbia, applying to full-time tech jobs, or going all in on live event painting again. I asked a bunch of my friends “What should I do with my life?”
The best answer I got was “As much as you can”
I decided I want to live up to that answer.
What does it mean to do as much as you can with your life?
I spent most of my life uninterested in this question. I was scared because what I want most had no certainty attached: no prestige or financial security.
I’m telling you about the sketchbooks because that was the start of everything for me, a practice of noticing the world and making sense of it. It is rare to have something you do all the time, for no reason but the love of it. Few things feel like that.
When I am drawing someone, listening to them, I experience an orchestra: steady notes, a long line of music. Every groove, every turn reveals something precious. Our lives are full of these symphonies, waiting to be heard if we observe each other a little more closely. My art was born from this desire to listen: pressing my ear to a new city, and hearing what it has to say. The details that strike a chord, so intimate they become universal, are what I strive to capture.
These sketchbooks were the biggest clue I had about what I wanted to fill my time with, and I have spent so long keeping sketchbooks of my thoughts and observations. I was getting tired of the sound of my own voice. So I asked the owners of the coffee spot I go to regularly, Third Wheel Coffee, if they’d be open to sitting down for a conversation.
This was a year ago. I sat with Tom and Vida in the backyard of their shop, and asked them about their life. They told me about how they met working at a coffee shop in Noe Valley, and fell in love.
They told me about finding a tricycle on facebook marketplace, and building a coffee counter for it. That’s how Third Wheel Coffee was born.
They wake up at 4am, and spend all day bantering with their regulars, pulling shots of espresso, working with their hands, on their feet.
The stories they told me sparked a fascination with storefronts. Their days seem long and they seem so fulfilled. What compels someone to open a brick and mortar shop? I started talking to more business owners in the city.
Slowly, a ritual was built. I started asking people who their favorite neighborhood businesses in San Francisco were. I chose the ones where people would know the owner by name. I’d drop by the store and tell the owner I’d like to illustrate their story. We would set a day to sit down in their shop. My friend Fischer setup a social media page and sometimes we’d go to the interviews together. I take notes by hand and draw them as they talk. There are a few questions I have in mind, but often, they know what they want to say. I am there to listen to them talk about their life. There are immediate visuals that come to mind as they speak; like the tricycle in Tom and Vida’s story, or the old cabinet they turned into a coffee counter.
The physical paintings resemble my sketchbooks. They are handwritten and hand-drawn, collaging watercolor vignettes and writing. Each painting is about 22” x 30”, and takes about 15 hours to make.
I talked to Tolgay, who traveled the world for four years meticulously studying the best ingredients for Baklava. I talked to Dario, who worked in molecular medicine for 2 decades before opening a sandwich shop named after his grandmother. I talked to Paula, who has sold empanadas in the mission for the last 30 years.
One of the big inspirations for this project was Humans of New York (HONY). A photographer, Brandon, photographs a stranger and listens to them talk. He shares photos of New Yorkers captured on the street, on park benches, sitting on the stoop of their brownstone. He writes the interview in the caption. There is nothing flashy about it, but each story he shares stirs something. He has built an audience of 12 million. The core of his work is sincerity; peeling back the layers of judgement and fear that keep us from seeing someone clearly, and allowing ourselves to see differently. I have never met Brandon, but I am convinced his magic lives in the way he listens, how he is able to elicit vulnerable reflections, and distill those reflections to their most luminous parts. How is he able to capture someone so compassionately? I don’t know, but that is what I would like to spend my life figuring out.
As much as San Francisco is known for being the technological nerve center of the world, the most vivid stories I’ve heard in this city have nothing to do with our technology, and everything to do with our humanity. There are people who create things and serve others: go to the produce market at 4am, grind coffee beans, knead dough to make pasta. There are people who have driven the same bus route for a decade, who have fallen in love and decided to raise kids here.
This moment in time calls for a different kind of cultural record. As the city is changing rapidly and every billboard on the highway is populated with AI ads, there is more value than ever in slow, human documentation.
My deepest belief is that San Francisco needs art that captures what it’s like to live here: not the statistics, but the felt sense. That is what I want to do. I want to be San Francisco’s Sketchbook, writing and illustrating the stories of the city. I will talk to the Uber drivers, the CEOs, the mailmen and grandparents, the legacy businesses and communities. These stories will be captured in large watercolor paintings, combining illustrations and writing.
For the last three months, I have been doing this. I have been stopping strangers at the park, in cafes, on the street, and asking them if they are open to sitting down for an hour, and telling me about their life. There is a very low success rate to this request. Most people are suspicious. They think it’s a scam, or I’m working for the ACLU. But there is no catch. I am not asking for money. I am just asking to listen to someone speak. About 1 in 20 people consider it, and 1 in 30 would end up sitting across the table from me the week after, telling me about their life.
Through this work, I am learning how to be a better question asker, and a better listener. When I do a good job, I am reminded that all my striving is for this: a few precious moments in a conversation when time no longer exists. I am reminded that these are the moments I want to transform into art.
The end of the project will look something like this: a room in San Francisco, full of writing and watercolors, many stories from many people, their voices all tangled together with scenes from the city, places that are sentimental to them, and intersections we all recognize.
I have not charged money for the art I have made for this project, and plan to keep it that way. Perhaps offering everything for free is impractical, maybe impossible. But San Francisco also thrives on impossibility.
In 2025 and 2026, I’ve been lucky to be supported by grants from OSV and Emergent Ventures to pursue this project. If you are interested in supporting this work, you can do that here.
Lovely in every sense of the word...
so special to see your work scattered throughout the city. i love seeing you do what you do :)