A while back, I realized that I wanted to gain perspective on the life of an established, full-time artist. I started looking for an artist’s assistant position. But since San Francisco’s art market is so small, it can support only a limited number of working contemporary artists. My chances looked slim.

Luckily, I had the good fortune to assist Mario Ybarra Jr. in June. A Los Angeles based artist, Ybarra was a Capp Street Artist in Residence at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts. I was at the right place at the right time, but it was serendipitous in other ways.

First, I felt that my interest in contemporary art and background in community art were at odds. Ybarra’s project for the Wattis was—can you believe it—a mural. I jumped at the opportunity to work with an artist weighing the conceptual considerations of mural painting. Second, my sensitivity to CCA’s poor racial diversity had become more acute, and Ybarra freely supplied his perspectives on being a contemporary artist of color. I appreciated our frank discussions, which raised questions of access (described in terms of squeezing through a hole in a chain-link fence, and now holding the fence for others to enter), identity politics and being pigeon-holed or tokenized. Third, I was interested in shaping the art world into one that I would want to participate in. Ybarra is a great case study for changing the terms of engagement. In addition to his inventive artistic practice (his studio is the street), he’s also a youth educator and gallery owner—an entrepreneur who proudly employs neighborhood locals, a curator who seeks artists that might not have a venue otherwise. His generosity is clear; his gratitude for his teachers lives on as a practice of mentoring emerging artists (and, by the way, donating work to support Galleon Trade).

Of course, I picked up on many practical, technical and conceptual skills (like rag-throwing, spray-bottle painting, and balancing the urge to upset cliches with a commitment to humanizing his subjects) as well, and actually, I had a great time working with him and his other assistants from Wilmington.

Ybarra’s two-story mural is in the stairwell at the entrance of the Wattis Institute, on the San Francisco campus of the California College of the Arts. The mural will be unveiled in September, along with a new monograph.