'TOVA LOBATZ' Micron 08 Pen on Bristol Paper 19x24in. 2022 It's pretty hard to believe that I've known @tovabatzz for 13 years now. I remember first meeting her as a lively young whippersnapper, wet behind the ears and desperate to sink her teeth into some SF low brow/street art while interning at White Walls Gallery in 2010. I don't even know if she was old enough to get into bars she was frequenting at that time to be honest. Prior to me meeting her, she had already completed an internship in 2009 with Annodominal Gallery in San Jose where she worked with David Choe and Sheperd Fairey. She was awarded this internship due to a paper she wrote while getting her sociology degree at UC Santa Cruz based on the social implications of Graffiti throughout human existence, from the cave-man era to present day. In the year prior to this internship she was studying abroad in Barcelona reading up on art through @juxtapozmag and @fecalface.gallery. This formative time in her life would plant the seeds for many of her future endeavors in the arts. Tova officially moved to SF in July of 2010 after interning at White Walls Gallery while commuting from Santa Cruz. She quickly moved up the ranks to become White Walls' Gallery director in 2011 to 2013. After White Walls, she spent the next two years curating various public art projects before becoming gallery director of @heronarts in 2015. One of these projects is Art City (helloartcity.com) where she co-curated (with Jenny Scharif), project managed and fundraised a city wide project to replace advertisements with art in SF. This was followed by her involvement in the 2013 and 2014 Nashville Walls Project (@nashvillewallsproject) where she curated exhibitions that coincided with murals being painted by local and international artists in Nashville, TN. Tova's joy comes from seeing an artist's vision come into fruition through providing them with the proper tools, money, resource and space to achieve that vision. Public art is what originally drove Tova to pursue the arts because she believe that public art is for everyone. More on Tova and her exploits soon....!!!!!!! #tovalobatz #heronarts #publicart (at Heron Arts) https://www.instagram.com/p/CnSzfrhPvES/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
