Slowly, but surely, the North Bay is re-opening. After more than two months in self-isolation due to Covid-19, residents in Sonoma and Napa County are starting to return to shops, restaurants and other social venues.

In addition to relaxing shelter-in-place orders, the Black Lives Matter movement and protests against police brutality continue to take to the streets in spots like downtown Santa Rosa, meaning that Father’s Day weekend 2020 is shaping up to be a busy few days in the North Bay.

Of all the events taking place between June 20 and 21, the most ambitious endeavor is the planned 24-Hour Protest in Santa Rosa. Organized by a group of young activists, the planned protest aims to make a stand against police brutality and to champion peace and justice. On the event’s Facebook page, organizers write, “We want to shed light on police brutality in our community and are trying to create a platform where all people of color can come and express the change they feel is important. We want to provide a safe environment for everyone to come together and HEAR each other on the issues they feel are important to make a change. “

With that goal, the protest will begin on Saturday, June 20, at 1pm in Doyle Park near downtown Santa Rosa where organizers will be handing out calling cards with demands for local, county and state government representatives for protesters to call. The event then marches to Juilliard Park, where group activities, educational talk and an open mic stage will cover topics such as knowing your rights and how to effect change the community.

A silent candle-lit march in remembrance of lives lost to police violence then moves the protest to the Old Courthouse Square, where protesters will camp out overnight until a Father’s Day brunch on Sunday morning caps off the event. The protest organizers ask participants to adhere to Covid-19 precautions such as wearing a face covering and keeping socially distant when possible.

“The purpose of this protest is to give a voice to the people who need it most. This is absolutely a protest 10000% in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and want to give the opportunity to them and others alike to express the change they feel needs to happen within our community,” write protest organizers on Facebook.

In the art world, many North Bay galleries and arts groups are re-opening to the public after months of closures. One such group is the Arts Guild of Sonoma, which announced the reopening of its gallery this week, just in time to participate in the National Arts Drive on June 20.

The national grassroots fundraiser is a multi-city community experience taking place across the US. During the “Drive,” artists will showcase their work in ways that can be seen in-person from a safe distance.

“While online showcases of creativity are abundant, nothing compares to an arts viewing experience in person,” says Heidi Luerra, founder and CEO of organizing group RAW Artists. “While arts events have gone dark, this is our creative response to ensure artists are still seen, heard and supported.”

The National Arts Drive was originally set to take place in Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Los Angeles, New York (Brooklyn), San Francisco, Seattle and Washington D.C., but has quickly spread to multiple cities, and the Arts Guild of Sonoma is participating from 1pm to 4pm on Saturday. “We are taking every precaution to make sure all remain safe and will adjust as need be with changing circumstances,” writes the arts guild in a statement.

Not every venue is ready to re-open, namely small music and events venues like West Sonoma County’s beloved Occidental Center for the Arts. Last month, the center first took to the web to combat social distancing and share an abundance of music and fun with the Arts In Our Hearts Virtual Variety Show, featuring a cavalcade of performers. The free streaming show was such a hit that the arts center is doing it again on June 20 at 8pm, with another stellar line-up of popular Bay Area and North Bay artists including T Sisters, Jon Gonzales, Dirty Cello, Mimi Pirard, Nina Gerber, Emily Lois and a dozen others performing. The virtual variety show will stream on YouTube, and the center has also created some fun playlists featuring many great performers who’ve been at OCA.

Other music events happening online for those still social distancing include Petaluma’s Drive-In Concert at East Washington Place shopping center. The concert on June 20 is already sold-out for in-person (or, in-car) attendees, though the event will live stream on Facebook, with headliners Majestic: San Francisco’s Ultimate Tribute to Journey.

Also on June 20, Clif Family Winery in Napa Valley hosts a virtual Summer Solstice Concert with music from up and coming artists introduced by CLIF GreenNotes, a community of musicians and nonprofits committed to environmental justice. The virtual event will also be sharing cooking tips from Chef John, and special guest appearances from Clif Family winemaker Laura Barrett and winery owners Gary Erickson and Kit Crawford. To RSVP and receive an exclusive link to the virtual show, purchase a Summer Solstice Kit on Clif Family Winery’s website.

Veteran artist and educator Anna B Francis has lived in Point Reyes Station for more than a decade, though there are still some neighbors who didn’t know she was an acclaimed watercolor and oil painter until they saw her work hanging at the gallery at Toby’s Feed Barn earlier this month.

“I’ve been in three shows since I came out here (in 2008), but this is the first time I’ve exhibited this whole body of work in California,” Francis says. “Since I really haven’t exhibited out here much, there are people I’ve known over the years who didn’t even know I did this sort of thing.”

On display for in-person viewing, “The Art of Anna B Francis” is the artist’s first-ever retrospective exhibit and features more than 60 works spanning 40 years of her career in art and education. Portraits of flowers, people and more hang on the wall at Toby’s during the essential store’s open hours, and the show will remain up until June 30.

Francis is a lifelong artist, who discovered the talent and the passion as early as kindergarten. An East Coast native, she received her Master of Fine Arts Degree from Syracuse University and her Bachelors Degree from University of Kentucky. She also attended the Art Students League, the School of Visual Arts and Parsons School of Design while living in New York City between 1979 and 1982.

In 1983, Francis entered the educational world after publishing her children’s picture book, Pleasant Dreams.

“The idea of teaching came about when the book was in the process of coming out,” she says. “I wanted to teach children’s picture book illustration. I was also interested in teaching watercolor because I am self-taught.”

She first taught at the Silvermine Arts Center in Connecticut, where she led classes in drawing and children’s picture book illustration. Over a 24-year teaching career, Francis instructed over 2,500 students; teaching drawing and watercolor at Longwood Gardens for 15 years, teaching oil painting as an adjunct professor at Villanova University, and offering classes and workshops at several other institutions.

In her own artwork, Francis is a master of color. She draws her portraits of people with realism in mind, while her floral portraits take much more artistic license.

“In the people-portraits I focus on accuracy and recognizable likeness, my work on those portraits are close to life-size,” she says.

All of her people-portraits were drawn from live models, except for two pieces in the show. One is a dog portrait, and the other is a recreation of a baseball card of then-Mets player Darryl Strawberry.

“I was commissioned to do that by one of my teachers in my Masters Degree program, Murray Tinkelman,” Francis says. “Murray was putting together a show called ‘The Artist and the Baseball Card.’ He gave me a couple of baseball cards of Darryl Strawberry. I did some drawings, and then I saw him on TV and said, ‘these cards don’t look anything like him.’”

Living outside of New York City at the time, Francis drove into the city to rent VHS tape of “Let’s Go Mets,” the team’s official theme song, and paused the tape on Strawberry to get a more accurate look, despite the static lines on the VHS freeze-frame.

That painting traveled around the country for many years on exhibition, and in the spirit of baseball cards, Francis traded the piece to Tinkelman, a famous sci-fi and fantasy illustrator, in exchange for one of his drawings. The Baseball card piece in the show at Toby’s is a recreation of that original artwork.

For her floral art, Francis is big on color. She’s actually a color expert, having developed her own color wheel while teaching at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania, and she has taught color theory. Like her people portraits, many of the floral portraits are also very large pieces, with the largest being over 6 feet tall and 4 feet wide.

“I actually wrote an article for The Artist’s Magazine on how to paint large watercolors,” she says. “They titled it ‘How to Paint Large Watercolors with Ease,’ which isn’t really true—but I wanted people to know how to do it.”

Francis’ preferred floral subject is the Amaryllis, a flower that boasts large bulbs on top of leafless stems. Francis paints her flowers with saturated watercolors, giving them a lush spectrum of color.

“I liked Amaryllis because they were easy to grow in the winter, and at the time I was living in New York, and because they would change like a live model,” she says. “They just seem to have a lot of personality to me.”

Francis has a series of Amaryllis portraits she calls “Conversations,” in which she paints the flowers as if they are in various stages of interaction with each other or the viewer. Many of those pieces are part of the retrospective exhibit.

The show also features other artifacts, such as reproductions of her children’s book.

The retrospective was meant to be up in April, though Marin County’s shelter-in-place orders in March delayed the exhibit until now.

“People are very serious about sheltering-in-place, and of course that’s good,” she says. “But, Point Reyes is a very artistic and creative community, so the show has been a huge hit here locally. People have gone two or three times because they can go and see some art, and it’s been a wonderful personal experience for me to see people happy about it; that was the real major purpose of it.”

“The Art of Anna B Francis” is on display now through June 30 at Toby’s Feed Barn, 11250 Hwy One, Point Reyes Station. Current hours are Mon–Sat; 9am–5pm, closed Sundays. 415.663.1223.