Queer Arts Featured is an artist-led boutique, gallery, and event space at 575 Castro St., the historic storefront that once housed Harvey Milk’s Castro Camera. We build on this profound legacy by providing space to celebrate, support, promote, and connect people across the 2SLGBTQIA+ spectrum and intersectional lines. The ethos of the space is born out of this legacy, and as Harvey and his peers did here, we are building a community hub in the heart of The Castro that centers Queer voices not given the space they deserve in the neighborhood, the larger community, and on the national stage.
Queer Arts Featured (Queer A.F., as our big pink neon sign reads) showcases art across all mediums with a focus on the work of underrepresented, disenfranchised, and emerging Bay Area Queer artists and makers. Our aim is to reduce barriers that local creatives face by offering a reduced commission rate of 25% for Black and US Indigenous creators and 35% for all others. Our ultimate goal is to generate enough contributed income to give 100% of profit directly to the creators we showcase.
Our boutique currently features 65 queer artists and makers who work in a wide variety of mediums including painting, photography, fashion and accessories, jewelry, collage, illustration, digital art, stationary, ceramics, and homegoods.
We hold bi-monthly exhibitions in our gallery space featuring anywhere from 1-26 artists per exhibit, with themes that create awareness, spark conversation, and widen the lens on different aspects of the queer community within the Castro. We have held 12 exhibitions since our opening in June of 2022 centered on sex positivity and kink, youth voices, queer identity in the United States, Palestinian queer artists, body hair and its role in society, and femme perspectives. Our most recent show titled ‘Wet Paint: A Work in Progress’ was a communal living piece of art that began as a blank slate, which every viewer was invited to participate it. Over the 2 months it was up the piece evolved and changed in a way that truly encapsulates what we're trying to do at Queer A.F.
We also strive to build community through a lively and diverse events schedule, with all events being sliding scale and donation based, and no one turned away for lack of funds. Since we opened in June 22, we've been host to and hosted Vocal AF (a monthly multilingual open mic), yoga and meditation for indigenous queer people and allies, a monthly BIPOC 12 step recovery meeting, Queer Bedtime Stories (a monthly literary reading series centering multicultural queer stories and experiences), Sketch AF (a monthly live figure drawing class), the T for Tea Kiki (a tea party and social for trans folx), many drag shows and performances of diverse modality and language, clothing swaps benefiting Lyric (which works with unhoused and at risk LGBTQIA+ youth), multiple workshops (including art therapy groups, movement, reiki and sound healing, vogueing, introductory shibari, leather harness making, drag makeup, and more), speed dating for the trans community, gender affirming 3D image body scanning art for trans folks, receptions for film festivals and private parties, and so much more. Each event is a gathering of new and familiar folks alike, and everyone leaves feeling the joy, love, and connection we're hoping to foster in the space.
We generate endless ideas and know many creators that we are excited to work with in the future. With the ability to bring more folks into the fold and pay them fairly for their work, we are poised to grow and thrive in ways we only dreamed possible, and continue to build strong and lasting relationships that in turn strengthen our community's connection to each other. Our goal is to provide this historically gay neighborhood a radically queer space for all members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community to feel safe, seen, represented, joyful, and creative.
