Amid the dry brush and abandoned cranes looming over the Hunters Point Shipyard are hundreds of artist studios housed within old barracks.
This weekend, the public will be able to visit the converted buildings, once controlled by the Navy, and meet over 100 artists during the first Shipyard Open Studios since 2019. One of those artists is painter Ira Watkins, who first arrived in San Francisco in 1959.
After crashing his mother’s car in his native Waco, Texas, the 15-year-old Watkins fled first to Dallas and then to Los Angeles, where he worked in a wrecking yard.
He then hitched a ride with an uncle driving up to Alaska to pave airport runways, but the pair only made it as far as Richmond. After a dispute with his uncle, Watkins crossed the Bay to San Francisco, and has been based here ever since.
Watkins, now 80, squatted in vacant apartments and lived in his van for years before he got serious about painting.
Since then, he has taught art to disabled adults at Richmond’s National Institute for Art and Disabilities, been interviewed on television, featured in The New York Times, and paid $100 a minute to speak about his “ascendance from the street.”
“I was only up there about five minutes,” Watkins says with a laugh. “They had to cut me off.”
Now he lives in the Bayview’s George Davis Senior Center and paints seven days a week. With the Shipyard Open Studios a few days away, The Frisc visited Watkins in his studio to talk about shooting pool in the Dogpatch, changes in Bayview-Hunters Point, and the inspiration for his paintings.
The conversation has been edited and condensed.
The Frisc: When did you start painting?
Ira Watkins: I always could draw and paint, but I never did it professionally. If you said, “Hey man, paint me something for my living room,” ain’t no problem, as long as you bought the supplies. When I went to Central City Hospitality House, they put a foundation under me. All I had to do was show up and create every day, and through them, I painted my way out of poverty.
I was in Richmond visiting my uncle, and I was walking around and saw a big ol’ sign that said National Institute of Art and Disabilities. I see a big gallery on one side and a workshop on the other side, and there are people in there doing art.
I walked in the door and the first thing out of their mouth was, “Hey, did you come here to see about the job?” I said yeah, if it’s art-related! [Laughs] I was still carrying my backpack portfolio around and would take it out and flash it, because that was me marketing me.
I got a lot of different plays in restaurants and beauty salons and stuff by doing that. I would ask the host, “Can I show my paintings?” and once in a while they’d say yes and I’d sell two paintings for $20 each, and that was money for gas.
At NIAD, I didn’t come from no teaching point of view — I was their friend. And that’s what I told everyone: this is the best thing to happen to me, I get paid to hang out with my friends, and all I do is motivate them through conversation.
One young lady mostly came in and didn’t hardly do no work. I took her into the gallery and said, “Looking at this wall, I don’t see none of your work up here. Don’t you know your mom would be real proud of you if she came over here and saw some of your work?” She went back over there and got to drawing like crazy.
I stayed there ten years, but at some point I didn’t have the energy to do what I wanted to do anymore, so I left. I missed the money, though. I’m a seventh grade dropout and I was making $48,000 a year. [Laughs]
I went back to painting and was working with a couple galleries in Oakland. I had a painting up that somebody took a razor to, cut the picture right down the center. They brought it to my attention, looking for me to be upset. I said no, I created something that got a reaction. I did a hell of a thing. [Laughs]
How did you develop your painting style?
I try to paint stuff that I know about. This one [gesturing] is of my grandparents’ house, where in the summer I would cut wood, hang out, and sleep on their porch. I would hear all this music until 12 o’clock at night. I had built a shoeshine box and I went to shine shoes in front of some of these places [clubs and pool halls]. I would go in a pool hall and sweep the floor, then I got to the point that I could go and shoot pool on the back table, which was tore up, and the owner would tell me a lot about how to play.
‘Two Big Lies’ — can you tell me about this painting?
My interpretation of history is that they don’t teach you history. They just tell you their story. I’ll give you a good example: Columbus. They say he discovered America. Everybody knows that’s a lie — all these people were here! The other part is the King James version of the Bible. I can’t believe that. If he’s a just god, how can he choose a people? Everybody is equal, but the teachings of the church will have you believe that these people are better than these people.
If the Bible is true, just pick the Bible up. Don’t go over here and listen to the preacher. Collections, dues — the average preacher is living better than the people who come into the church. Jesus, when he taught on the hilltop, all the people surrounding him were poor people, and he didn’t come with jewelry and robes. But you go to the average church now and the preacher is the sharpest-dressed person in there. Why? Because people support him. No one can get you into heaven but yourself. You got to live a certain way.
You said you ‘flipped around’ and started painting every day. What was going on before you flipped around?
I hung out in the street 24/7. I used to smoke plenty of weed. Sold weed on the street. Caught a case selling to an undercover agent dressed like Michael Jackson — the gloves, the jacket, a damn funny haircut. I had to go to rehab. As soon as I finished the program, I went back to smoking weed, because I like it. But now it’s been three or four years that I haven’t been smoking weed, and I never did mess with tobacco, alcohol, or other drugs.
What was it like coming to SF?
When I came to San Francisco, they didn’t have all this high-rise stuff, there weren’t skyscrapers, and you could afford rent. You could get five-bedroom flats for $250 or $300 depending on what neighborhood you were in. The Tenderloin used to be lit up like Vegas and Reno back in the day. Just go to the library and pull up some of the images and you’ll see.
I got in from Richmond and seen all these Black people and thought well, they’ve got to be going somewhere in their neighborhood. I’m gonna go with them. I start thinking maybe I should go back and butter up to my uncle [laughs], but then I got off the bus and saw a pool hall right on Tennessee and 21st, and when I saw that I didn’t feel depressed or worried anymore.
The Dogpatch was the neighborhood I first hung out in. There was a house on Tennessee Street with a lot of guys who were doing what I was doing, and that’s the family I met. I had been paying rent at a little hotel across from the pool hall, and this guy told me I could come sleep on the couch. That neighborhood, from Minnesota to Third up to 22nd Street, was one big family. I could hold my own shooting pool. Back during that time, pool was a hustle.
Past the train tracks, there was a big artist studio that this brother Geraldo’s family used to own. There was Bethlehem Steel and the American Can Company, and those workers would get off work, cash their checks, and come to the pool hall.
The whole neighborhood has changed. Everything around there. But there’s a store that sells sandwiches, where you can sit out in the street, that’s been there forever.
You also lived in the Western Addition?
The longest I ever stayed in a place without paying rent — you won’t believe it. Three and a half years [laughs]. On the corner of Divisadero and Ellis, there was a house that used to be owned by the city. My friend, the founder of KPOO radio station, and a couple DJs stayed in the building, and I knew them. One was going to Texas on a vacation. He said I could stay there, and all I had to do was get my own food.
Going around the building I saw that they had these empty apartments. I came down the fire escape to one, went in, took the lock out the door, went and got me a lock and put it in. Painted the apartment and moved in. Everyone thought I was paying rent because they were paying rent [laughs]. The janitor smoked those King Edward cigars. Every now and then I’d give him four or five.
Then this new guy came on as head of the housing authority, and they were showing him all the properties. They opened my door and said, “This place is supposed to be vacant.” I had painted, I had furniture, and they said, “How long have you been here?” I said only a month, which was a lie. They said, “How soon can you get all your stuff and be gone? Can you be out by Monday?”
So that Monday, when the guy from the housing authority came, I was already sitting on the steps waiting for him. I said, “Hey man, I can’t move my stuff. If I go down to G.A., the General Assistance, and get them to pay the rent, can I stay?” He said yes. So G.A. required that I go down to Glide to do some kind of duties.
Six months pass, and the housing authority guy tells me they’re selling the property. So I went to Milwaukee, and then back to Texas, and stayed there five years before I came back here.
How have you seen Hunters Point change?
I stayed on Navy Road in the ’60s. The part of Navy Road I stayed on don’t even exist no more.
The first time I came out here, they had very few white people, and most were Italian. Now you don’t have Black-owned businesses like it used to be. The population here [in San Francisco] is about 3 percent Black. [Editor’s note: The 2020 census showed the SF Black population at 5.2 percent, down from 5.8 percent in 2010.] It used to be 30 percent. They didn’t just move because of pressure and high rent.
When they locked up all the Japanese people in the internment camps, they needed a work crew to fill that gap. At that time you could buy a home for maybe $15,000 or $20,000. But today these homes sell for a million dollars. And these people have gotten up in age. So they sell their home, go home to whatever part of the country they came from and buy a house for $100,000, and live like kings off the other $900,000.
I love San Francisco. I could go somewhere else and stay two or three months, but I never would go and live. Look at the weather. Some people wanna go play in the snow. I don’t!
How do you see Shipyard Studios in relation to other changes in Hunters Point?
Well, I’m not really involved in a lot of activities, I’m more of a loner. But I value the Shipyard because you’ve got a stable place, and twice a year you’ve got a major show. Out of 300 artists, ain’t no telling how many people each will invite, or who might come in. A gallery owner might come in and say they want to show your work.
This virus has put a damper on the visitation, but the Shipyard does a lot of advertising, which is great. The only negative part is the contamination. They say they have it under control, they’ve been removing contaminated wood, but what about the soil under the building? In the long run, all this shit gotta be zapped. And when they zap it, what are they gonna put up? Apartments.
But hell, I’m 80 years old, what am I gonna complain about? You get up in your 80s and start talking about the future, you must be kidding yourself! You’re living on borrowed time already! I’m just happy to be here in the shape that I’m in. The only thing I can complain about is old age [laughs]. But I think I’ve had a beautiful life.