^{Welcome to our first newsletter dedicated to the Shaping Legacy project! Shaping Legacy: San Francisco Monuments & Memorials (its full government name) commits to a multi-year critical examination of the monuments and memorials in San Francisco's Civic Art Collection and a reimagining of the commemorative landscape.}

^{Funding from the Mellon Foundation propels Shaping Legacy, aligning with the San Francisco Arts Commission’s dedication to cultural equity and positive social change. The project investigates how the City can better attend to the various, myriad, dimensional tributes around San Francisco. We examine how the city vets and imagines monuments. We want to broaden public discourse on what has historically been a fractured process toward something closer to repair and community healing.}

^{Public art has always carried an invisible through-line. It was designed as a bold tool of civic engagement, and it still is. We're here to see what that means now.}

^{The Shaping Legacy audit documented 105 monuments and memorials in San Francisco's Civic Art Collection. Who gets remembered. Who doesn't. Where power lives in public space. This isn't abstract theory. This is what's actually standing in our city right now.}

Mattie Loyce, courtesy of Artist

^{When protest becomes proposal, communities stop asking and start building.}

^{There is a history in a Black woman's hands, in the calloused fingertips that have pulled quilting threads through generations of silence. Mattie Loyce's hands hold secrets only she can unlock: revolution disguised as craft, community building masquerading as art.}

^{African American quilting holds a lineage of storytelling, of secrets kept and shared, of history honored and archived into physical presence. From the bold narratives of Faith Ringgold to the mathematical genius of Gee's Bend quilters, this craft transforms memory into monument. In San Francisco, the AIDS Memorial Quilt created its own sacred tradition. Panel by panel, loss became legacy. This history planted the seed for what Mattie Loyce would grow in the Tenderloin.}

^{Mattie does not ask for space at the table. She weaves the table itself from stories and thread, then calls the whole neighborhood over to feast on possibility.}

^{The Alchemy of Critical Joy}

^{Mattie discovered something essential while studying fashion designer Patrick Kelly. "Critical joy, radical love of self, that's needed to survive with marginalized identities. If we wallowed in the pain, survival would be very slim. It's the jazz, it's the sauce."}

^{Joy as protest. Joy as strategy. Joy as the rhythm that keeps communities alive.}

^{The Quilt as Sacred Text}

^{In nine sites across the Tenderloin, the real work began. Over 70 artists gathered in circles, continuing the ancestral tradition of quilting as community building. Mattie led the "We Are Home" community quilt project, bringing the dream into being with hands that stitched and a spirit that guided.}

^{The finished series now hangs as proof of what communities can build together.}

^{This is what Shaping Legacy seeks: art that creates space for communities whose stories have been exiled from bronze and marble. Mattie didn't just facilitate workshops. She midwifed monuments. She helped birth commemorative landscapes that share and honor community stories.}

^{As a spokesperson for the Shaping Legacy project, Mattie Loyce embodies exactly why this work exists. Not to debate who deserves monuments, but to help communities build their own. While others theorize about public memory, Mattie reimagines it with needle and thread.}

^

^{The revolution lives in every workshop circle where the community gathers to name itself home.}

a lament by yétúndé olábájú, photo by Rich Lomibao

^{Artists and Community Collaborators Root Us in Relational Creative Practice}

^{San Francisco has a legendary legacy of political and social movements. The city stands as a haven for cultural and creative liberation. But when we look at the built environment and commemorative landscape in public space, what stories do we see? Or perhaps the better question: what stories do we need to see?}

^{The Shaping Legacy project practices reflection and relationships.}

^{Reflection that critically examines the past, considers the present moment, and envisions the future. Relationships that are reciprocal, with full awareness that community trust is not transactional.}

^{Stewarding this initiative means centering community and artists as our guides and advisors. We began with trusted relationships to create the conditions for repair and healing. We designed criteria for collaborators rooted in this place, committed to creative practice and collective memory. We engaged partner organizations with deep understanding of the local arts and culture ecosystem, organizations that could readily connect us to artists who integrate participatory components into their practice.}

^{Over the last year, our four partner organizations have been true collaborators in centering artists and communities' stories to reimagine monuments and memorials in San Francisco. The organizations and 16 artists that formed the Shaping Legacy Artist Circle are:}

• ^{500 Capp Street with artists Mildred Howard, Dewey Crumpler, yétúndé olábájú, and Tricia Rainwater}
• ^{Gray Area with artists Morehshin Allahyari, Jeffery Yip and Ruka Kashiwagi of Macro Waves, Lucia Gonzalez Ippolito, and Ambrose Trataris}
• ^{Samoan Community Development Center with artists Lee Kava, Epi Aumavae, SPULU, and Sophia Tupuola}
• ^{Tenderloin Museum with artists Ramekon O'Arwisters, Mattie Loyce, Preethi Ramaprasad, and Skywatchers}

^{Artists and collaborators participated in Community Workshops for the Audit Report, reviewed and advised on the Audit recommendations, and hosted public programs in relation to the Shaping Legacy prompts: What stories need to be told in your community? Where do those stories belong? How might we reimagine future monuments and memorials in our city?}

^{Their offerings for community healing, belonging, and rituals of repair are evidence of how we are evolving the archive and expanding public memory.}

^{Guided by artists and memory keepers, Shaping Legacy is an ongoing invitation to collectively reflect on the values we memorialize and activate the stories we need to tell.}

^{They weren't supposed to be here. But they made a home anyway.}

^{Bright green, very loud, and impossible to ignore, the wild parrots of San Francisco have been part of the city's skyline since the early 1990s. They first nested along Telegraph Hill, clinging to crooked branches and telephone wires like they were born to them. They weren't. They're red-masked parakeets, native to Ecuador and Peru. Immigrants. Escaped pets. Uninvited guests who outstayed the odds and stayed long enough to see everything change.}

^{They are witnesses.}

^{They watched the city gentrify, burn, rebuild, protest, forget, remember, rename, and reframe. They saw the neighborhoods shift. The monuments rise. The stories get told and retold. Not always truthfully, not always completely. These birds have seen more San Francisco history than most of us will ever know. And they are still watching.}

^{In a city known for beauty and protest, they are both. And that's why they're here.}

^{Why We Needed Them}

^{In Shaping Legacy, the San Francisco Arts Commission's civic memory project, we knew we needed a voice. Something grounded in observation, disarmed by humor, and untouched by bureaucracy. A perspective that wasn't partisan, wasn't defensive, and didn't need permission to speak.}

^{So we looked up.}

^{Why parrots?}

^{Because their wildness is political.}

^{Because they are immigrants who belong here now.}

^{Because they live in liminal spaces, between wire and sky, native and new.}

^{Because they thrive in the margins.}

^{Because presence and power aren't always the same.}

^{Because they nest in crooked places.}

^{Because they know what doesn't get said.}

^{Because they are lore.}

^{The parrots have become semi-mythic. Immortalized in the 2003 documentary The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, they carry both cultural weight and cult status. Mark Bittner spent years documenting their lives, their personalities, their survival against a city that never planned for them. The film turned local legend into national fascination. But here's what the documentary couldn't capture: they are still vulnerable. Still unprotected. Still at risk of displacement or disappearance. They exist on the edge and they remember everything that came before.}

^{That's the energy we needed.}

^{Hello Mitzy and Fritz}

^{Two parrots. One mission: truth with plumage.}

^{Mitzy is sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued. Fritz is skeptical, observant, and low-key hilarious. Together, they fly above the city offering commentary on San Francisco's monuments and public art history, and what gets left out. Through humor, surprise, and straight-up facts from the 2021 Shaping Legacy Audit, they give us space to laugh, reflect, and reckon without shutting down.}

^{They are not moral authorities. They are not policy makers. They are birds.}

^{And in a city still reckoning with truth, nuance, and visibility, the most honest voices might just come from above.}

^{How They Keep Us Honest}

^{Mitzy and Fritz guide us through uncomfortable facts without condescension. Their dialogue makes space for complexity. They name what they see, question what they don't, and remind us how often representation is the exception, not the rule.}

^{Through their monthly carousel posts, each anchored in a data point from the Audit, they challenge us to think about what we honor and why. Sometimes it's funny. Sometimes it's unsettling. Often it's both. They ask the questions monuments can't answer. They point to the gaps in our commemorative landscape with the kind of clarity that only comes from distance and perspective.}

^{What To Expect Next}

^{Mitzy and Fritz will continue to lead the dialogue across social media, paired with additional Audit insights, interviews, and spotlights on current artists reimagining public memory. Their presence will anchor the series as it expands into public programs and future exhibitions. They'll be there when we talk about Francis Scott Key, when we examine the Columbus statue, when we ask why certain communities have no monuments at all.}

^{They'll keep watching. They'll keep talking. They'll keep reminding us that belonging isn't something you're granted. It's something you build, one crooked nest at a time.}

^{A Final Word}

^{Shaping Legacy isn't about erasure. It's about expansion.}

^{And no one models that better than two birds who weren't supposed to be here.}

^{Let them be more than whimsical. Let them remind us what it means to watch a city and to love it enough to remember everything.}

^{Let them cook.}

^{Because this is about all of us, not just one hero. Here's where circles convene, artists activate, and community shows up to shape what comes next. Join us where the camaraderie continues over the next 60 days.}

1. MAKIBAKA - A Living Legacy with SOMA Pilipinas at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, through January 4, 2026
2. Civic Center Plaza Temporary Sculpture Installation: Request for Proposals (RFP) - deadline for applications January 12, 2026, 11:59 PM PST
3. The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot 2026 reopening dates with The Tenderloin Museum

^{Our primary actions for the Shaping Legacy project: supporting the Art Makers and documenting the Community Moments. This connects the creative work with the public impact. Here’s what's happened over the past three months.}

Legacy As Living Practice: Artist Panel at SFPL

Legacy as Living Practice, courtesy of SFAC

Home Without Borders: Macro Waves at Gray Area

Home without Borders, courtesy of Macro Waves

Shaping Legacy Artist Circle with The Justice Collective