Artist Meetups San Francisco
Connect through artist events and meetups in SF
9/27 SF PASTEL PEOPLE
Sun, Sep 27, 8:00 PM**The plan for our SEPTEMBER 27th session is st HOLLY PARK in Bernal Heights.** Nice landscape and views, lots of benches, shade, bathrooms and food/drinks nearby. Public transport should be easy. **At 1pm** I'll meet you in the park at the top of Highland Ave - come say hello then find a spot to draw. **At 3:30 pm** we'll meet at the same spot to share and enjoy everybody's work. **Bring layers!** Fog and wind are *always* a possibility, dress in layers. Bring your [pastels](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mfj0y76y996UhKqXsHtCc57et62fikry/view?usp=sharing), [paper](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d--XtZPmC2EuxaOtL9h4oo1faUgL9Q8s/view?usp=sharing), a [board](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Jig4iyOTJoQL6BMCj_A2ym-XX_Wg96d1/view?usp=share_link) (suggestion in blue links), tape, something to sit on, baby wipes as well as water and sunscreen/hat. **NOTE**: this meetup is **FREE** and no teaching. I do suggest you **sign up** so that you receive any updates about the event.
The Lives We Almost Lived: A Poetry Gathering on Choice, Chance, and Possibility
Sat, Sep 19, 9:00 PMEvery life contains other lives. The city we almost moved to. The work we once imagined doing. The place we never expected to call home. The friendship that began by accident. The door we opened without knowing where it would lead. Some possibilities disappear quietly. Others arrive without invitation and change the course of everything. A chance conversation. A missed train. An unexpected yes. A sudden departure. Someone entering our lives at precisely the right moment. Our lives are shaped not only by the choices we make, but by chance. By timing. By circumstance. By the paths we choose and those that close before us. By encounters we could never have planned. Years later, we sometimes look back and wonder how differently everything might have unfolded. Perhaps every life is accompanied by other possible lives. Selves we once imagined. Paths we chose and paths we left behind. Possibilities we lost—and possibilities we never knew to hope for. **The Lives We Almost Lived** is **a gathering devoted to choice, chance, possibility, and the roads not taken.** Together, we will explore the curious relationship between the life we once imagined, the lives that might have been, and the surprising life that somehow became our own. Across traditions, poets and writers have wondered about these turns of fate and possibility. C.P. Cavafy wrote of journeys and the lives formed along the way. Fernando Pessoa inhabited multiple selves and imagined identities. Elizabeth Bishop found entire histories inside departures and distant places. Wisława Szymborska returned again and again to chance—the astonishing accidents through which one life becomes ours rather than another. Agha Shahid Ali wrote across memory, migration, exile, and return. This gathering asks: **How have unexpected choices and chance encounters shaped the lives we are living?** **What possibilities opened when other paths did not unfold as we imagined?** **What parts of our earlier dreams and imagined selves still travel with us?** **How might the roads not taken help us see the road we are on differently?** We will read poems about choices and coincidences, missed encounters and unexpected arrivals, abandoned dreams and surprising beginnings, alternate selves, migration, love, friendship, and the mysterious turns through which a life acquires its shape. You are welcome to bring: * A poem about a choice, chance encounter, or turning point. * A piece about a road taken—or not taken. * A poem about a place you almost called home or someone who might have changed your life. * A piece about an abandoned dream, an earlier self, or a future once imagined. * An original work about the person you might have become. We invite poetry from all languages and traditions. Together, we will read, translate, reflect, and listen—allowing different possibilities and different lives to meet in the same room. As always with Kaavya Connections, the gathering may wander beyond the theme. We follow where the poems, memories, and conversations lead. Join us for an afternoon not about regret, but about possibility—the choices and accidents that shape us, the paths that disappeared behind us, and the mysterious life that somehow became our own. Bring a friend, a poem, an unlived possibility—or simply come to listen. **Above all, bring the roads you have traveled and the ones you still sometimes wonder about.** Please find more about us here — Kaavya Connections Website: [https://www.kaavyaconnections.com/](https://www.kaavyaconnections.com/?utm_source=chatgpt.com) Please also join the mailing list for upcoming gatherings and events: [https://www.kaavyaconnections.com/mailing-list/](https://www.kaavyaconnections.com/mailing-list/?utm_source=chatgpt.com) If you would like to volunteer to help organize future gatherings and performances, please email: [contact@kaavyaconnections.com](mailto:contact@kaavyaconnections.com) **Kaavya Connections**
Sketching the Views at Baker Beach
Sat, Sep 26, 5:00 PM**Our next Marin Sketchers Meet Up will be just north of the Golden Gate Bridge at Fort Baker - Cavallo Point.** There are an amazing variety of vantage points from which to sketch from at this former 1905 U.S. Army post: historic army buildings and gun emplacements, the fishing pier at the sheltered harbor and while in a comfortable Adirondack chair on the 2nd floor deck at Cavallo Point Lodge. All with a dynamic view of the Golden Gate Bridge as a backdrop. We'll meet at 10:00am at the old [Presidio Yacht Club](https://maps.app.goo.gl/c8bJiNttUEWkw8DZ7) at the edge of the Bay and throw down sketches at noon. **More info** on the [National Park Service website](https://www.nps.gov/goga/planyourvisit/fort-baker.htm). Here's a [park map](https://www.nps.gov/goga/planyourvisit/upload/map_mahe_150429_508_2021.pdf). Here are [directions to parking](https://maps.app.goo.gl/vmFrsR6ko7LsnTi4A) at the Bay Area Discovery Museum. **Also:** • bring your preferred paper, sketchbook, color media and drawing materials • you might be able to grab a free coffee or tea in the lobby at the Cavallo Point Lodge • restrooms are located nearby • post your sketches after on our MeetUp Event page or tag #MarinSketchers on Instagram • more info about our group at MarinSketchers.com • Call Bill at 415.846.1655, if you need more info, directions, etc.
Sketch Olivia Coffee (Cafe Art Circle - East Bay)
Sat, Sep 19, 8:00 PMCafe Sketching at Olivia Coffee & Flowers in Oakland. 📍 **1:00pm meet inside.** Look for us with sketchbooks. 🎨 Bring your own art supplies. Roam freely. Sketch what you see. ☕ Pull up a chair anytime to draw with us and talk art. 📓 2:45pm. We wrap things up with a show & tell throwdown. We’re heading to Oakland’s Pill Hill neighborhood to sketch at Olivia Coffee & Flowers, a spot with distinctly South Korean coffee influence with espresso, pour overs, matcha, and creative specialty drinks. Flowers arrangements add another layer color and pop to the place. This is organized by the **[Cafe Art Circle](https://www.zenbay.org/cafe_art_circle)** meetup under SF Sketchers. We explore coffee and tea shops around the Bay Area, using sketching as a way to experience the atmosphere of each place and its neighborhood. All skill levels welcome. For folks really into coffee culture and talking beans/roasters, the East Bay Coffee Enthusiasts will have a **[coffee talk event linked here](https://www.meetup.com/east-bay-coffee-enthusiasts/events/316244497/)** starting at 10:30am earlier that same day. Message Jimmy or post on the group board if you need help finding us.
Blue Heron Lake, San Francisco
Tue, Sep 29, 4:30 PMBlue Heron Lake remains one of the most peaceful spots inside Golden Gate Park. The lake was renamed from Stow Lake to Blue Heron Lake in 2024 to honor the great blue herons that nest around Strawberry Hill. Surrounded by trees, bridges, and scenic views, you will often see paddle boats on its calm waters and lovely walking paths provide excellent painting options. **Parking** Parking is on the adjacent street and is free **Restrooms** At the nearby boathouse **Lunch @ 12:30** Meet in the vicinity of this bridge for lunch
The Geography Within Us: A Poetry Gathering on Place, Memory, and Belonging
Sat, Oct 17, 9:00 PMPerhaps home is not simply the place we come from. Perhaps it is a language in which our name sounds different. A kitchen where someone knows what we like to eat. A city whose streets our feet remember. A landscape whose seasons still live somewhere in the body. A person beside whom we do not have to explain ourselves. A song that returns us somewhere. Or a place where we arrived as strangers and, slowly, unexpectedly, learned to belong. We carry many geographies within us. The place where we were born. The neighborhood where we grew up. The cities we chose and the ones circumstance chose for us. The landscapes we left behind. The languages through which we learned to understand the world. The people who made unfamiliar places feel like home. Over time, these places become more than locations on a map. They enter our memories, our gestures, our food, our music, our language, even the ways we understand distance and belonging. Sometimes we leave a place and discover that it never entirely leaves us. And sometimes a place we never imagined belonging to becomes part of who we are. **The Geography Within Us** is **a gathering devoted to place, memory, and belonging, and to the many landscapes, languages, people, and journeys that quietly become part of our inner lives**. Together, we will explore not simply where we come from, but the more mysterious question of **what places have become part of who we are.** Across traditions, poets have carried entire worlds within their poems. Mahmoud Darwish carried Palestine through memory and language. Agha Shahid Ali recreated Kashmir across distance and longing. Derek Walcott explored the ways landscape, history, and identity become inseparable. Naomi Shihab Nye finds belonging in family, language, ordinary encounters, and the crossings between cultures. Joy Harjo writes of land, ancestry, memory, and our deep relationship with place. Their poems remind us that geography is not only something outside us. It can also become something we carry within. This gathering asks: **What places have become part of who we are?** **How do landscapes, languages, cities, and communities continue to live within us long after we leave them?** **And how do the places we discover unexpectedly change our understanding of where we belong?** We will read poems about childhood streets and adopted cities, familiar landscapes and distant homelands, kitchens and train stations, migration and arrival, language and memory, journeys and returns, and the unexpected places where belonging finds us. You are welcome to bring: * A poem about a place that has shaped you. * A piece connected to a city, landscape, language, neighborhood, or community you carry within you. * A poem about leaving somewhere, arriving somewhere, or unexpectedly finding a sense of belonging. * A song, photograph, recipe, memory, or passage that transports you to another place. * An original work about a geography, real or imagined, that has become part of who you are. We invite poetry from all languages and traditions. Together, we will read, translate, reflect, and listen, allowing the different geographies we carry to meet in the same room. As always with Kaavya Connections, the gathering may wander beyond the theme. We follow where the poems, memories, and conversations lead. Join us for an afternoon exploring the places that made us, the places that changed us, the places that surprised us, and the places that continue to live quietly within us. Bring a friend, a poem, a place, or simply come to listen. **Above all, bring the worlds you carry within you.** Please find more about us here — Kaavya Connections Website: [https://www.kaavyaconnections.com/](https://www.kaavyaconnections.com/?utm_source=chatgpt.com) Please also join the mailing list for upcoming gatherings and events: [https://www.kaavyaconnections.com/mailing-list/](https://www.kaavyaconnections.com/mailing-list/?utm_source=chatgpt.com) If you would like to volunteer to help organize future gatherings and performances, please email: [contact@kaavyaconnections.com](mailto:contact@kaavyaconnections.com) **Kaavya Connections**
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