Artist Meetups San Francisco
Connect through artist events and meetups in SF
SF Plein Air Painting - Baker Beach Party!
Mon, Sep 7, 6:00 PMHi everyone! Join us this Labor Day for a glorious beach session! It's also my birthday so I will be bringing snacks and treats!! Expect it to be crowded (and rowdy) so try to carpool or use public transit. We will meet near the north beach entrance first, near the bigger parking lot. Then we can see where to set up depending on the weather and views! I will bring extra watercolor supplies in case you don't have your own! Bring a blanket/ sunscreen. Check the chat below for updates and to ask questions.
🐋 Special Invitation Meetup #2: Paint the Moby-Dick Marathon!
Sun, Sep 13, 1:00 AMThe Bay Area Plein Air Painters Meetup group has been specially invited to be part of this extraordinary 24-hour **[Moby-Dick Marathon](https://maritime.org/md2026/) at the [Maritime Museum](https://maritime.org/)!** Come capture the beautiful afternoon light, Aquatic Park Cove, the historic museum, and the unique energy of the marathon as Moby-Dick is read aloud by inside. It’s a rare opportunity to paint, explore, and be part of a truly memorable San Francisco tradition! **Meetup 2** **September 12** **6:00–9:00 PM** Maritime Museum, 900 Beach Street, San Francisco Our designated painting area is the 3rd-floor veranda overlooking Aquatic Park Cove. You may also paint from outside the building. Watercolor and pastel painters are welcome to paint inside the museum. Artists working in other mediums, including oil and acrylic, are preferred to set up outside or in less sensitive areas of the building to help protect the historic terrazzo floors. Please bring a tarp or floor covering whenever possible. Pack in, pack out, leave your area clean, and dispose of paint water outside the museum. Come for the evening light, stay for the atmosphere, and be part of this wonderfully unusual painting experience! Bring your easel and paint the magic! 🐋🌅🎨 **Disclaimer** By participating in any Bay Area Plein Air Painters meetup, you acknowledge and agree to the following: • Participation is entirely voluntary and at your own risk. You are responsible for your own safety, belongings, and well-being at all times. • Bay Area Painters, its organizers, and hosts are not liable for any injury, accident, loss, or damage that may occur before, during, or after any meetup or related activity. • Outdoor painting locations may involve uneven terrain, weather changes, traffic, wildlife, or other natural and environmental conditions. Please use your own judgment and take appropriate precautions. • Participants are expected to respect public spaces, private property, and fellow artists, and to follow all local laws and regulations. • By attending, you consent to possibly being included in group photos or social media posts unless you clearly opt out. • The group is intended as a supportive, respectful, and non-commercial community space for artists to connect and paint together. By joining this meetup, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to this disclaimer.
🐋 Special Invitation Meetup #1: Paint SF Maritime Museum!
Sat, Sep 12, 8:00 PMThe Bay Area Plein Air Painters Meetup group has been specially invited to be part of this extraordinary 24-hour [Moby-Dick Marathon](https://maritime.org/md2026/) at the [SF Maritime Museum ](https://maritime.org/)! Come capture the beautiful afternoon light, Aquatic Park Cove, the historic museum, and the unique energy of the marathon as Moby-Dick is read aloud inside. It’s a rare opportunity to paint, explore, and be part of a truly memorable San Francisco tradition! **Meetup 1 — Saturday\, September 12 \| 1:00–4:00 PM** **Maritime Museum, 900 Beach Street, San Francisco** Our designated painting area is the 3rd-floor veranda overlooking Aquatic Park Cove. You may also paint from outside the building. 🎨 All mediums are welcome. Watercolor, sketching, and pastels are especially encouraged inside the museum because of its historic terrazzo floors. Artists working in other mediums are encouraged to set up outside or in less sensitive areas of the building to help protect the historic terrazzo floors. Please bring a tarp or floor covering whenever possible. Pack in, pack out, leave your area clean, and dispose of paint water outside the museum. Come enjoy the afternoon light, soak up the atmosphere, and be part of this wonderfully unusual painting experience! Bring your easel and paint the magic! 🐋🌊🎨 **Moby Dick Guidelines** * Attendees can come and go as they please. * If you do intend on staying for a while, wear comfortable clothes. Our chairs are not known for being “all nighters”. There will be limited spaces for sleeping bags. * Costumes are encouraged! * Drugs/alcohol/weapons/vaping are not allowed. Usage will result in being asked to leave. * We will have free coffee available. Light snacks are allowed. * The museum is an artifact within itself. **We ask that you be respectful of the building and leave no trace.** * We will have some extra copies of Moby Dick on hand but feel free to bring your own. * The event may be recorded or live streamed. Your picture may be taken for promotional purposes. * No animals other than service dogs are allowed. If you have a pet whale, kindly park them in the cove. * People disrupting the reading will be asked to leave. * A scheduled reader might not make it on time or has to drop out, if that happens, we accept volunteers from the audience. **Disclaimer** By participating in any Bay Area Plein Air Painters meetup, you acknowledge and agree to the following: • Participation is entirely voluntary and at your own risk. You are responsible for your own safety, belongings, and well-being at all times. • Bay Area Painters, its organizers, and hosts are not liable for any injury, accident, loss, or damage that may occur before, during, or after any meetup or related activity. • Outdoor painting locations may involve uneven terrain, weather changes, traffic, wildlife, or other natural and environmental conditions. Please use your own judgment and take appropriate precautions. • Participants are expected to respect public spaces, private property, and fellow artists, and to follow all local laws and regulations. • By attending, you consent to possibly being included in group photos or social media posts unless you clearly opt out. • The group is intended as a supportive, respectful, and non-commercial community space for artists to connect and paint together. By joining this meetup, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to this disclaimer.
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**
SF AI Artists September Show, Critique, & Promote
Wed, Sep 23, 1:00 AMWe're bringing this popular event from South Bay to SF! This will be an event to show your AI art work to other attendees. The rule is simple: \- Present one piece of art work you've recently made \- Share your social media account so folks in the room can help you promote it \- Audience will each offer a compliment and a critique\, to help you learn your strengths and weaknesses Additional time will be used for free discussions on techniques, marketing ideas, art direction, and any topic the group consents to. The event space, snacks and drinks are sponsored by our friends at [Thruline Studio](https://www.thruline.studio/?utm_source=luma), a newly launched AI video studio built specifically for screenwriters and those who are serious about making videos! Our sponsor will also be giving out free credits to attendees at the event. We're looking forward to the vibes you'll bring to the group! Please help us consolidate sign-ups by registering through luma: https://luma.com/iujso5v7
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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