After moving to San Francisco in 2016, artist Claire Starkweather-Forrest and family left San Francisco a year later. While she was pregnant with her third child, the house they lived in with their two young children tripled in size to be put up for sale. Since it was our 4th rental and we didn’t have to move our 2 sons again, we decided to move back to San Diego.
“I wondered what would happen to cities if families could no longer afford to live in them. What will happen to the cultural fabric of the city? What is left?” she asked herself.
That inspired her current exhibition Where Have All Children Gone?. It was inspired by a similarly titled article in her Times of New York in 2017 documenting the decline in urban child numbers and its impact. About community and culture. Her art show will be on display at the Gallery by the Sea inside La Jolla’s St. James by the Sea Episcopal Church until the end of September, with her opening reception tonight at 7pm. Her work includes 10 of her drawings on paper and 2 of her on vinyl records (including paintings).
Forrest, 43, lives with her husband and three children near Windansea Beach in La Jolla. She works as an art teacher, an art consultant, a muralist, and a full-time fine artist and illustrator. She took the time to talk about her latest work and her work focusing on her housing costs, her family’s moves, and its impact on culture. (This email interview with her has been edited for length and clarity.)
Q: Your current exhibition “Where Have All Children Gone?” was inspired by your reflections on the housing market. How did you come to focus your art on this topic and what does the name of the exhibition mean?
A: In 2017, I read San Francisco Asks: Where Did All the Children Go? In The New York Times, it really resonated with me. Someone put into words everything we experienced in our short time as citizens of San Francisco. She moved to San Francisco in 2016 when the housing market was booming, but it soon became apparent that rising costs were making it harder for her family to call San Francisco home. When we lived there for a few months, the owner of her 1,200-square-foot house, 110 years old, applied for a building permit to lower the house to the studs and triple the square footage of hers. . This is my 4th rental and I have spoken to other families at my son’s school as I don’t want them to move. They casually replied, “Oh, it happened to us too.” One mother is from San Francisco and was born into the land as an Indigenous and Latina who grew up in the Mission neighborhood. She and her partner could no longer afford to live there and had moved south of the city, commuting to get her son to school. He was attending on a scholarship and she was worried that the school would change its mind and ask them to leave.
We decided not to challenge the building permit and the house was later sold for $7.6 million. I was lucky enough to move to San Francisco in the first place, and I could afford to live there when a lot of people couldn’t live in San Francisco, but my family could actually live in the city. I remember wondering if it was reserved for the wealthy and single.
Q: What made you want to express the relationship between housing and its community and culture through art?
A: San Francisco was not the city we thought we would be moving to. Much of the neighborhood looked like a stage with props set up and was inhabited by actors unrelated to the set. you can’t. Cities like San Francisco and cities in America lose priceless gifts when families are forced to leave. Not only do we lose quality of life, we also lose history.
Years before moving to San Francisco, I was visiting the city with my eldest son who had just turned one. He took his beloved lion with him everywhere. We were shoving him in his stroller through the center of town. I suddenly realized that he had dropped the lion. We started following the tracks, but his lion was gone. I was inspired by his missing lion and the crisis of cultural and economic identity that cities like San Francisco are currently experiencing.
Claire Starkweather Forest’s drawing “Below the Surface” is included in her current exhibition “Where Have All Children Gone?” At the gallery of St. James-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in La Jolla.
(Claire Starkweather Forest)
Q: How long did it take from idea to completion?
A: I started working on these drawings in 2018 and had planned to have an exhibition in 2020, but the world obviously had other plans. I am still inspired by family, urban lifestyle and cultural relationships. I don’t think the San Francisco problem of families leaving the city is anything special. This is a challenge faced by many cities in the United States and around the world. I really enjoy working on this series, diving into the research, the people I met, the stories they shared with me, and observing the organism that is life in the city and how it is constantly changing. .
Q: What do you hope people will understand about this topic after visiting and seeing the art you create here?
A: A paradox inherent in many American cities: The fascinating places, history, culture, and vibrancy of raising children are the product of families who can no longer afford to live there.