Hazelwood and Goodman Speak About the Issues

This year, from June 13 to September 13, visitors to the museum will have the opportunity to see an exhibition featuring the art of San Franciscans Art Hazelwood and Ronnie Goodman, entitled “Speaking to the Issues.” The exhibition will comment on multiple socioeconomic issues such as poverty, corruption and homelessness.

Some of these issues hit home especially for Goodman. A self-taught homeless artist and marathon runner, he faces some of these difficulties every day in San Francisco. He told Runner’s World that he tries “to paint those images I see in a beautiful way, even though there's a hard edge. Life can be extremely hard."

He does not let his misfortunes keep him down. Instead, he uses them to inspire change and awareness of the homeless people living in the San Francisco area. During last year’s San Francisco Half Marathon, he raised almost $10,000 for Hospitality House, an organization that helps the area’s homeless and helped Goodman pursue his artistic passion.

Hazelwood also inspires change through his art. Both he and Goodman have created works of art for Street Sheet, a San Francisco newspaper that focuses on issues of homelessness. His exhibition “Hobos to Street People: Artists’ Responses to Homelessness from the New Deal Era to the Present” “[draws] parallels between the response to homelessness in the Great Depression and today,” he told the Arts Politic.

“Speaking to the Issues” will feature linocuts, woodcuts, etchings and books created by the two artists, much in the style of the Mexican printmakers coalition El Taller De Gráfica Popular, which will also be on view at the museum this summer. You can read more about "Speaking to the Issues" here.

Watch Hazelwood's video below to see Goodman speak about two of his Occupy movement posters: