& FRIENDS GALLERY is a communal art space.
Night Magic
January 17, 2026 - ??
A photo art show with friends, featuring Murphy Andalon, Joseph Hoang, and Casiel Sanchez.
Opening January 17, 5 - 9 PM
Mortis
October 31, 2025 - December 26, 2025
Opening October 31st, 6 - 9 PM
Tote Show
August 8 - October 2025
A show dedicated to our beloved totes.
Opening August 8, 2025, 5 - 9 PM (ish)
Flower Shop
Ari Bird
May 24 - July 18, 2025
Inspired by the history of BAB’s gallery building (a former flower shop), Ari’s show features large sculptures of discarded objects that once served a pivotal role in ritual or interaction. A rainbow rose boutonniere, missing juice box straw, crumpled plastic thank you bag — trash that’s significant when given space and attention.
A self-taught sculptor, Ari transforms accessible materials into playful oversized installations, exploring how we use objects (whether picked from nature or the dollar store) to self-soothe, self-identify, tell stories, and create connection.
While painting the giant, repetitive text ‘thank you’ multiple times in a row, it definitely became a sort of ritual of gratitude. This body of work is about the ways we extract from nature to engage in human ritual…. The bag just looks like it’s right where it belongs/trash when outside, you can’t really see the scale. - Ari Bird
Programming:
First ever International Sticker Club Meeting, July 18, 2025
BAB’s First Annual Postcard Show
April 4 - May 11, 2025
Join us as we celebrate the art of the postcard, showcasing the 200 postcards that YOU sent in!
BAB’s First Annual Postcard Show features over 200 postcards from our friends, a postcard-making and postcard-sending station, and a special installation highlighting the work of artists currently incarcerated at four different California facilities, organized by Project PAINT, a nonprofit dedicated to arts education in corrections.
untitled (curated by Jhett King)
January 17 - March 16, 2025
Artists included:
@aleximissyou, @bperelson, @bytatymalinjan, @biggesthug96, @dualincomenokidswithadog, @_chump, @headinmyhand, @honeylemontrans, @jhettk, @joegarlic69, @knotdavis, @koricallu, @l4.nc.3, @maddog.diy, @palomamercier, @jack.page, @jayer.eese, @ik.a.rt, @presleystonerock, @terrorism______, @user_3129261184poop, @violent_bones, @walkerhewitt
Please Arrive Kindly
December 29, 2024 - January 12, 2025
The first gallery show and a retrospective of the Burn All Books loose-leaf monthly mail art zine. This show opened with in-person readings from contributors of Mail Mag on December 29th at Mail Mag Live!
From the wall text, written by Nick Bernal:
“Late 2019 our San Diego risograph press Burn All Books was provided a word of advice from Bay Area bookshop Wolfman Books, “Start a subscription model. People want to support what you do.” Well, what do we do? We certainly don’t do subscription services. Instead, what we tend to do is print artwork and zines constantly and as cheaply as possible. But it intrigued us, and we wondered, well, what if every month we sent out zine-like things by mail? Zine history is rooted in trades through the postal service, and before a whole generation of commercial magazines died on the racks they also flourished in mailboxes. History’s Italian Futurists, Neo-Dadaists, and outsider artists utilized the mail to bypass gatekeepers and gallerists though Correspondence Art. So yeah, a monthly mail subscription to our small press became something curious to us.
We dove into it.
What started as a broadside newsletter evolved around 2023 into a multi-contributor project.
Every decision made was based on the questions:
-How do we widen our community?
-How do we make stuff faster and cheaper?
-How do we make an ongoing project sustainable?
We created answers through experimentation:
-Let’s embrace mistakes. We will stand by whatever outcome.
-No binding. Everything comes loose in the envelope.
-This must be very fun for us, since this is a lot of work.”
Thank you to the William Male Foundation for their support and to Paloma Mercier, Philip Brun Del Re, Ruby Dinkins, & Galia Shakked for their work on this exhibition.
Programming:
Mail Mail Live!, December 29, 2024