{"id":34659,"date":"2025-11-02T14:21:32","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T14:21:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/34659\/"},"modified":"2025-11-02T14:21:32","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T14:21:32","slug":"at-90-a-san-francisco-painter-becomes-a-tech-industry-darling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/34659\/","title":{"rendered":"At 90, a San Francisco painter becomes a tech-industry darling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prentiss Street in Bernal Heights is as steep as they come. Pedestrians huffing and puffing up the street might miss the whimsical plywood cutouts \u2014 monochromatic animals, a figure of a woman \u2014 peeking from one of the houses. What\u2019s harder to glimpse is the world they hint at: decades of art, texture, and color, created by one of San Francisco\u2019s most prolific artists, Toby Klayman. (opens in new tab)<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Klayman, 90, has been producing work in San Francisco since the 1960s, and the Prentiss Street cutouts are among her whimsical creations. Her bold, playful paintings, prints, and ceramics are prized by collectors, particularly tech workers at Google, Microsoft, Instagram, and Airbnb; the latter once turned her studio into a branded \u201cAirbnb Experience.\u201d <\/p>\n

They are drawn to work that is part naive, part modernist, inspired by Toshusai Sharaku, the Japanese print artist famous for masks; France\u2019s Jean Cocteau; and German painter and printmaker Max Beckmann. One of Klayman\u2019s early large-scale canvases, \u201cGarden of Eden,\u201d recently sold to a private collector for $100,000. Far from slowing down in her 10th decade, she is gaining in visibility.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AnKlayman in her studio. | Source: Toby Klayman<\/p>\n

The Standard recently met Klayman and her husband of 28 years, the artist Joe Branchcomb, also 90, at the house, where the couple has crammed a lifetime of art and memories. One standout piece is a sculpture by Ruth Asawa of Klayman\u2019s face, which she keeps in a padded shoe box. <\/p>\n

She shares the space, and a sprawling 1,000-square-foot studio, with Branchcomb, whose colorful assemblages and watercolors mingle with her mostly black-and-white acrylics, prints, and ceramics, creating a home bursting with life and color.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sitting in the kitchen surrounded by their creations, Klayman recounts how Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky asked her to participate in the company\u2019s \u201cExperiences\u201d program after reading reviews of her artwork and back cottage.<\/p>\n

\u201cBrian invited me to come to the campus to present in front of 400 people. He said, \u2018I know it\u2019s your nap time, but we\u2019ll send a car for you.\u2019\u201d Some of the people she met in that room have become her core circle of collectors, even as they have scattered across the world and the tech industry.<\/p>\n

\"AnKlayman shares illustrations from her sketchbook.\"BlackArt hangs from a curtain line in Klayman\u2019s home studio.<\/p>\n

\u201cToby\u2018s art initially is appealing because it is deceptively simple, with bold brush strokes on different mediums with contrasting forms that feel almost childlike,\u201d says collector Bola Akinsanya, global operations lead at Airbnb.\u201cHer art just makes me happy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018Toby didn\u2019t have a patron\u2019<\/p>\n

Born in Providence, Rhode Island, and raised in Haverhill, Massachusetts, Klayman got serious about art at Brandeis University in the 1950s. First, she was interested in sculpting, until a boyfriend questioned that choice. \u201cHe said, \u2018Sculpting is easy!\u2019\u201d Klayman recalls. \u201c\u2018Try painting on a flat surface \u2014 it\u2019s much harder.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n

She did \u2014 and fell in love with the medium and began hanging out with other artists around Harvard Square. She sold her first painting \u201cafter it dried,\u201d for $100.<\/p>\n

\"AKlayman has a collection of posters from her previous art shows.\"SixThese illustration scans get projected onto larger formats, like canvas, on which Klayman makes bigger pieces.<\/p>\n

In 1966, with \u201c$10 and three suitcases,\u201d Klayman came to San Francisco to get away from Boston, where her acquaintances were experimenting with drugs \u201cthat were kind of scary.\u201d Of course, that was a heady time for San Francisco, too, but Klayman settled into a side of the city far removed from the psychedelic Haight-Ashbury scene.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Klayman found a house on 30th Street and temped as a typist at Bank of America \u2014 \u201ca horrible job,\u201d she recalls. \u201cWe had to raise our hand to go to the bathroom.\u201d In her spare time, she was drawn to jazz clubs, City Lights Bookstore, and Vesuvio Cafe.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Her big break came when a manager at Maxwell Galleries bought a piece. One introduction led to another, landing Klayman more gallery connections and a teaching position at City College that she held for close to three decades.<\/p>\n

\"Bold,This piece was recently sold to a private collector for $100,000.<\/p>\n

\u201cToby didn\u2019t have a patron. She came out to San Francisco with almost no money and found a way to survive and flourish, and has been a mentor to many students,\u201d says Larry Friedlander, a literature and theater professor emeritus at Stanford University who has known Klayman from her Harvard Square days and was her roommate in San Francisco for 14 years. \u201cShe\u2019s one of the people who has made this a wonderful city for people who come here and carve out a creative path, which is increasingly more difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

To Klayman, part of being an artist and teacher is mentoring people through the practical side of the profession. \u201cI\u2019ve taught thousands of people [how] to stay artists, in spite of the husband not liking it, the parents not liking it, even if you have to get a second job,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\"VariousArtworks in the studio.\"Black-and-whiteEven the kitchen is decorated.<\/p>\n

The AIDS epidemic took many of her students and friends, including collector and collaborator Cobbett Steinberg and photographer Crawford Barton. Over the years, Klayman has seen it become increasingly difficult to take the artist\u2019s way in San Francisco, with the closing of art schools and a winnowing of galleries willing to host emerging talent. \u201cWhy was City College campus at Fort Mason closed? Why did the Art Institute close? It\u2019s all the cultural money going away,\u201d Klayman says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She doesn\u2019t blame the tech industry for this change. Klayman embraces social media \u2014 Instagram and Pinterest (opens in new tab)<\/a> are her favorites, and she\u2019s speedy to communicate and engage there \u2014 and, so far, is unbothered by AI\u2019s encroachment. \u201cThey\u2019re just people,\u201d she says of her tech-world collectors. \u201cThey\u2019ve got their passions; I\u2019ve got mine.\u201d She laughs about one Google-affiliated buyer who works on longevity research: \u201cIf he figures out how to make me live longer, I\u2019ll be thrilled.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AnKlayman\u2019s husband, Joseph Branchcomb, still calls her his \u201cyoung wife.\u201d | Source: Andres Ramirez<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s anyone especially relishing Klayman\u2019s youthful vigor, it\u2019s Branchcomb, who refers to Klayman as his \u201cyoung wife.\u201d They maintain their union with humor and lightness; during one of our encounters, Branchcomb left the kitchen, only to return with a vase of fresh-cut roses from the garden. \u201cThat\u2019s beautiful, dear!\u201d Klayman said. When they argue, she says, Branchcomb starts singing in pretend Italian to diffuse the tension. \u201cHe\u2019s so ridiculous!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cToby has an amazing effect on people,\u201d says collector Becca Jones, who met Klayman through Airbnb; her husband, Joe Zadeh, was one of the company\u2019s first employees. \u201cI fell in love with her and Joe, and she became a core person who inspired me and continues to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n

With all that love around her, what does Klayman wish for her legacy? She doesn\u2019t want to think about it just yet; for now, she\u2019s happy to keep working. \u201cI have to be in the studio every day,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s just like brushing my teeth and saying hello to my husband.\u201d<\/p>\n