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I’m gonna use this week’s newsletter to shamelessly plug a book by an old friend about another old friend.
On Tuesday, Chronicle Books released It Will be More Beautiful Than You Could Ever Imagine: The Art of Susan O’Malley by Christina Amini. You may know Susan’s work from the enormous mural on the side of Root Division in SoMa or the newly installed one at the Minnesota Street Project. In 2016, Susan’s work was featured on Financial District kiosks as part of the Art on Market Street program and in 2021, SFMOMA displayed her alongside friend and collaborator Leah Rosenberg.
Those are incredible accomplishments for any artist, but Susan didn’t get to see any of it. She died in 2015, leaving behind a husband, five siblings, several nieces and nephews, and countless people who believe in their hearts that they were her best friend.
A memorial held for Susan at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts was packed to the back of the room. (And that was the second one: A bigger outdoor service had already been held at Villa Montalvo where Susan had been a resident artist.)
At one point, Susan’s friend and collaborator Jonn Herschend led the room in a pep rally-style chant of her name, with one side of the room shouting “SUSAN” and the other shouting “O’MALLEY.” I’ve never seen a crowd go through so many emotions so quickly: We went from giggles (Shouting at a memorial? Really?) to catharsis (Shouting! At a memorial! Really!) to fits of laughter and tears.
Susan’s work was all about honesty, vulnerability, and connection. She would’ve loved it.
I met Susan when we were both living in Brooklyn in the late ‘90s. She and Christina and their roommates were freshly graduated from Stanford and doing the New York thing before finding their places in the world. We were all so young. None of us had any idea what was ahead.
Susan probably didn’t consider herself an artist then, but she had a playful glint in her eye. She was in a comedy troupe at Stanford and had a comic’s impish, open approach to life, always ready for connection and fun.
It was Susan who dropped the pin that brought me to San Francisco. In 2000, I was living in Los Angeles; she was visiting her family in San Jose and I went to see her there. We took Caltrain into the city and went to the Exploratorium at its original location and had drinks with her older sister’s friends on a roof deck in North Beach with a view of Coit Tower. It was a perfect intro to the city. How could I not want to move here?
About a decade or so later, I made the move. Susan and Tim, her funny, laid-back, and quite tall husband, were here to meet me.
By then, Susan was a working artist. She was building a body of work made up of thoughtful, pithy aphorisms drawn from interviews and questionnaires with people she encountered. She also wrote her own and turned them into site specific installations like A Healing Walk (2013) on a trail at Montalvo. What elevated Susan’s work above motivational art was her embrace of humans in all of our complexity.
Susan’s work wasn’t a hipster gloss on HANG IN THERE, BABY posters. It offered a gentle, hopeful guide for how to live. Her word and color choices drew people in, made them feel like they were in conversation with the artist and each other. (After her death, The Thing Quarterly put out a tribute tote featuring Susan’s piece imploring LESS INTERNET, MORE LOVE. I had so many conversations with strangers while carrying it.)
When I found my first SF apartment in Duboce Triangle, Susan and Tim came to my housewarming and Susan brought me two prints from her series Community Advice (2012) as a gift. One read DON’T EVER LIE, a perfect mantra for a journalist; the other read TAKE MORE CHANCES, MAKE MORE FRIENDS, a good message for someone new in town.
When Susan signed the backs of the prints, I complained that no one would see her signature. She got that glint in her eye and said, “It’s just for you.”
These projects and others are in Christina’s book. So is Susan. It’s a big, colorful, loving tribute to our best friend. You should definitely get a copy. After all, it’s just for you.
Only on Gazetteer SF
BETTERLANDS: Cydney Hayes talks to Badlands and Toad Hall about their removal of surveillance tech.
TOMATO ON TOP: Olivia Peluso on the very elevated sundaes at JouJou.
FARCE TIME: Adam Brinklow talks to Ishmael Reed about his play featuring Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Adolf Hitler.
A DIFFERENT KIND OF PRIDE: Eddie Kim talks to the creators of the Jesus Won shirts worn by members of the Giants.
INSIDE OUT: Joshua Bote and Eddie Kim were all over Outside Lands.
HIP-SLOP YA DON’T STOP: Tyga used a local AI music maker for his latest album.
DOGGONE IT: A website ranking Corgi’s female staffers has been taken down.
AW, SHUCKS: A buzzy Oakland oyster-jazz party heads to an old SoMa church.
PRO BALL: Manic Monday gets to know Dean Ball.
Just a reminder: Your tips can go a long way at Gazetteer HQ. Got a good scoop? A fun bit of tea to spill? A nugget of gossip you’re dying to share? Send it our way. We can assure anonymity.
Dispatches from the fog
IN THEIR BACKYARD: How the Portsmouth Square Park renovation is hurting some Chinatown businesses. (San Francisco Chronicle)
CASSANDRA 2.0: Paulina Borsook foresaw our tech dystopia in 2000 and all she got was $65K in debt. (Mother Jones)
POOR READING COMPREHENSION: Jill Lepore takes tech founders to school. (Wired)
SHUTTERED: Gallery and artist collective SF Camerawork is closing after more than 50 years. (San Francisco Standard)
TOO DAMN HIGH: Out-of-town news orgs keep reporting on local rent madness. (Wall Street Journal)
As always, thanks for reading, and a special thanks to our paid subscribers.
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