In the Studio: George McCalman’s Sanctuary in San Francisco
Photography by Baidi Kamagate
Artist and creative director George McCalman shares a space with ceramicist Georgia Hodges in San Francisco’s Outer Sunset, and it’s here, in this stripped-down, soulful space, that he became an artist. “I was just dazzled by the place," he says. "It was raw. The walls weren’t finished. It was an ode to process.” Here, George drew portraits of Black pioneers—ultimately turning the drawings into a tour de force of a book for HarperCollins: Illustrated Black History: Honoring the Iconic and the Unseen.
“The studio has windows on three sides, so how the light moves through our space is something that is hard to ignore,” says George.
“The entire studio has a decidedly unfinished veneer; for myself, it’s an important reminder that process is the actual destination."
An early galley of his book sits next to some of the tools that went into its making.
The book grew out of a personal project: In 2016, he decided to draw/paint a portrait of an important Black figure every day of Black History Month.
Luna, Georgia’s dog, is a constant companion in the studio.