Julia Li (l) and Callie Jones (r) pictured at their COL Gallery, Ghirardelli Square, San Francisco. Photo Catherine Barry.

Callie Jones and Julia Li met over some fried food — they think it was probably egg rolls — at the Asian Art Museum. Jones was there for a meeting, and Li worked at the museum as the Director of Inclusion and Belonging. Sort of joking and sort of not, they say the stars aligned for their encounter when Li asked Jones if she had ever thought of starting
a gallery.

“I had been planning to have a gallery for 15 years,” Jones said. “Ever since I was a teenager.”

Last August, Jones and Li founded COL Gallery in Ghirardelli Square. Jones had worked at art galleries in New York for eight years, and when she came to San Francisco, she was sales director for Jessica Silverman for about a year. Li went to art school, where she was one of the few people of color and noticed that most of the teachers were men. After art school, she got an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley, with a plan to someday run her own business.

Both Li and Jones wanted to tell missing stories in art, and that’s what they’re doing in the show, Echoes of a New Frontier (May3 - June 29). Jones grew up in Texas and the way the American West has been presented and mythologized fascinated her. The title of the show is inspired by John Kennedy’s acceptance speech for the presidential nomination in 1960 when he invoked the pioneer past of the country and continuing challenges ahead. In New York, Jones worked with Richard Prince's commercially successful cowboy photographs and that’s part of what led her and Li to talk about cowboy imagery and the popular imagination.

Yowshien Kuo; "The Golden Pavilion," 2024; Acrylic, pigments, and glitter on canvas 36 x 48 x 1.5 in

Li was born in Shanghai and grew up in Valley Park, Missouri, and she says as an Asian American, she often wasn’t seen as either. One of the artists in the show, Yowshien Kuo, is also from Missouri and known for his images of cowboys and Boy Scouts. For Li, the West means freedom, and she was glad for Kuo to be included in this show presenting a different picture of that freedom.

“Our artists are mostly Native American, Black, Asian, and women artists. Traditionally when you think about a cowboy series, you might think about a Marlboro Man, but we've really built this show around the experiences of folks who have historically been left out
of those freedoms,” Li said. “The show is really meaningful for us because it's a celebration of the American West, and who is American, and what does American mean?”

Oakland artist Devynn Barnes’ painting, “Rest between retellings” is included in Echoes, alongside artists like Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, who recently had a show at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Memory Map. Growing up in Seattle, Barnes was interested in Americana, especially Western iconography, and wanted to see themselves in those histories, but never did.

Then a couple years ago, Barnes went to the Black Cowboy Parade in Oakland and was delighted to see Black people making space for themselves, riding horses, and wearing cowboy hats and boots. Barnes says seeing this kind of community meant a lot
to them.

“Oakland holds such a sentimental spot for me just in a homecoming of identity and Blackness and queerness,” Barnes said. “There’s a beautiful tie in being a queer person. Identity is so much about creating new ways of being and existing because systems aren't built for queer people.”

Esteban Samayoa; "Bajo la Luna" ("Under the Moon"), 2023; Oil pastel on canvas; 46 x 40 in

Jones and Li found Barnes’ work at San Francisco’s Schlomer Haus Gallery. And at Oakland’s pt. 2 Gallery, they saw Esteban Samayoa’s “Abajo La Luna” (Under the Moon), which is also in this show.

Samayoa grew up in Sacramento. He says his version of the West is a blue-collar lifestyle of landscaping on the ranch.

“I’ve never felt part of a Western cowboy type of thing,” he said. “I think I saw it through my father more from a Mexican standpoint, with the cowboy boots, the cowboy hat, living on the ranch, all the chickens, the horses, things like that. Whenever I think of Western America, I always think of Mexican Western.”

"Echoes of the New Frontier" is on view May 3rd through June 30th, 2024, featuring works by Janet Alling, Devynn Barnes, Marc Dennis, Terran Last Gun, Grace Kennison, Yowshien Kuo, Breanna Cee Martins, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Ed Ruscha, Esteban Samayoa, and Emmi Whitehorse.

Main image:
Marc Dennis; "Sugar On My Tongue," 2024; Oil on linen26 × 36 in