For its residents, how can focusing on what’s local inform a sense of identity? Shannon O’Malley’s San Francisco Coloring Book series invites event visitors to color in scenes of their neighborhood and locate themselves in relationship to San Francisco.

In response to the sense of overwhelm San Francisco Bay Area denizens endured during 2020-2021’s onslaught of crises (the California wildfires, San Francisco’s early COVID-19 lockdown, the U.S.’s surge in racial violence, President Trump’s destabilizing force and the storming of the U.S. capitol,) Miami-born O’Malley began to take refuge in the local, walking nearby neighborhoods, taking photos, and collaging them into scenes. These images invite people to inhabit a space outside globally and commercially created news and social media that increasingly alienates them and genericizes culture. 

Live coloring events

Aside from producing the first of her series, The Mission District Coloring Book, O’Malley holds parties in which attendees interact with 5” prints of her drawings. This social practice invites neighbors to collectively co-create and comment on the drawings, allowing them to interact with the local in a fun, accessible way.