Behind the Mural with Brian Barncelo
The story behind the beautiful, neighborhood-inspired art inside of San Francisco’s Nopa restaurant
By Stephen Jackson
Whenever I try to talk to artists about their craft with the purpose of writing something about it, I always end up feeling like a pretty big square.
Well, after sitting down with artist Brian Barncelo to chat a bit about the iconic mural on the south wall inside Nopa, I was again with that oh-so familiar feeling. I feel like I always go in wanting concrete answers about influence, motivation and significance — things that most decent art veils by way of its very creation — and leave with a more of a sense of confusion than anything else. Either way, I wanted to get some sort of VH1-esque “Behind the Music” thing about that mural, so I gave it a shot.
As an artist, Brian draws from improvisation and an expressive stream of consciousness when creating his work. However, from what he told me, it seems like he basically just has fun painting and that’s why he does it. For many of his non-commercial pieces he doesn’t like to go in with a set plan and rather just shoots from the hip as he goes along, making decisions based on his own perception of his subjects (if there are any at all). This poses a problem when making things that “need to make sense,” (i.e. a mural about Divisadero), but he doesn’t let site nor topic-specificity get him down too much.
In fact, it doesn’t really get him down at all. For the Nopa piece, he more or less went in with some very basic letter forms and hints of architectural shapes and then began to carve out semblances of roofs, people, cars, etc., not the other way around. In this way, he didn’t sacrifice spontaneity for adherence to subject matter. Actually, I felt like Brian was describing a type of built-in escape from boredom by working himself into a kind of puzzle that he needs to figure a way out of. Again, he really is just trying to have a good time here. There’s kind of an “it’s only rock n’ roll but I like it” vibe to his whole approach, and this definitely comes out in his work. Bam. “Behind the Music with Brian Barncelo.”
Rolling Stones reference aside, the large painting at Nopa seems to be more of a nod to the former Jazz era of the block than anything else. The connection between the improvisational approach to his painting and the genre is obvious (after all, The Church of Coltrane was just down the block) and the all the lines and blocks of color seem to be alive as they move from background to foreground. Even this assertion, however, runs the risk of saying too much with regard to what the painting is “about.” It’s not supposed to be an historical artifact of the neighborhood (although a close inspection proves quite informative) and nothing Brian said was meant to demystifying his own process. In fact, I’m pretty sure he was confused why I was even there in the first place. Ultimately, what I gleaned from our conversation was that the piece is simply a representation of the way he sees our neighborhood, and even if that’s all it is, it’s still pretty cool.
Stephen Jackson is a frequent diner at Nopa and observer of the neighborhood via his blog, The CorridorSF.
