Saturday, September 6, 2025 
1:00-4:00pm (see schedule below)
Shipwright's Cottage, 900 Innes Ave, San Francisco, CA 94124 [2]
Free and open to the public 

The San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC) and the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department (RPD) are excited to present a new project by multidisciplinary artist Afatasi the Artist. Finders Keepers is an interactive art experience that invites Bayview-Hunters Point community members to explore India Basin Waterfront Park and the surrounding neighborhood in a new and meaningful way.  

In 2024, Afatasi was one of two artists selected to participate in the SFAC's yearlong Artist-in-Residence program at RPD's India Basin Waterfront Park site in the Bayview-Hunter's Point neighborhood. Since 2015, SFAC's Artist in Residence Program has provided artists a chance to step inside City departments, offering a rare opportunity to see how the City works and create art that responds to and reflects that experience.

During her time in residence, Afatasi along with other AIR Conni McKenzie and Curator-in-Residence Rhiannon Evans MacFadyen spent every Wednesday working out of the park’s historic Shipwright’s Cottage classroom. This became a space for rich conversations about their art, their lives, and their experiences as Black women navigating the world, the city, and even the park itself. Over time, these Wednesdays grew into community days, drawing in curious park visitors, local artists, neighbors, and friends. It was through all of these conversations and connections that Afatasi's project was born.  

Recognized as a visual artist, curator, textile artist, metal artist, Afrofuturist, community organizer and activist, Afatasi turns to her practice as a metal worker for this project. A longtime member of the Box Shop, a local collaborative workspace dedicated to artists focused on metal and industrial arts, Afatasi will fabricate small scale, hand-welded sculptures and place them throughout the park for community members to find and take home. While exploring the park for these hidden, one-of-a-kind treasures, participants will enjoy local music and food, community celebration, and a welding demonstration by the artist herself.  

Finders Keepers seeks to reclaim public space for creativity and community and pays tribute to Bayview’s legacy of skilled makers and artisans—especially Black women welders who worked in the shipyards during WWII. Their contributions to labor, art, and industry remain under-recognized and this project brings that history to the forefront through Afatasi’s contemporary metal sculptures.  Through this project, Afatasi affirms that art belongs in our neighborhoods and homes and uplifts the idea that Bayview residents are not just witnesses to art, but stewards and collectors of it. The project is a joyful reminder to the Bayview-Hunters Point community that despite the hardship it continues to face, art and opportunity belong here, too.  

Event Schedule

1:00-1:30 pm - Sign in at Shipwrights Cottage. You must sign in to participate in the scavenger hunt
1:30-1:50 pm - Artist Talk at the Box Shop, 951 Hudson Ave, San Francisco, CA 94124
2:00-2:20 pm - Welding Demonstration
2:30-3:30 pm - Scavenger Hunt. Pick up a map at Shipwright's Cottage
3:30-4:00 pm - Sculptures handed out by Artist and Closing Remarks

How to get to India Basin Waterfront Park

MUNI: Take the 19-Polk to Innes Ave & Griffith St.
Parking: Street parking available. Please read signs for time limits and street cleaning.
Bicycle parking is available in the park

About the Artist

Afatasi The Artist is a mixed-media conceptual artist, futurist, proud native San Franciscan, and is a member of San Francisco’s only shrinking demographic. Her work is informed by her deep concern of the continued population decline of her community, affirming them through mixed-media textile, metal, and research-based artworks that are used as vehicles of disruption, exploration, and future-dreaming. Her artwork is a continuous exploration of the intersectionality of race, culture, gender, class, and geopolitics. Past injustices have shaped present-day realities, so what does this mean for our futures?  The mediums used to navigate this question include textile, metalwork, and mixed-media visual arts. www.afatasi.org [3]

Program Partners