Joseph Abbati Bio

I have been creating work in San Francisco since 1978. In the 1980’s I started a menswear collection called Saxon. In 1985 I was named Menswear Designer of the Year by San Francisco Magazine for their Golden Shears Awards.

In the 1990’s I turned my attention to digital arts and began working with photography. I worked as an art director and designer during this period.

The 2000’s brought me into the marketing retail world where I worked as a Creative Director for three Fortune 500 companies. My passion in photography, composition, and form translated well in the commercial sector. Concurrently, I was working on more personal work through photography.

In 2010 I left the corporate world and started my own business, D Quarters, to fuse my love of photography with decor. I came across a new digital technique that allowed me to transform my work into woven tapestries. I started first by creating large scale wall art. I found I could also create smaller versions of my work and transformed these into “pillow art”, artwork to live with …. off the wall and on your furniture.

I have also used my business to promote other artists (Rex Ray, Toban Nichols, Terry Rosen, and Jenny Scharaf ) and non-profit organizations. In 2011 I worked with Visual Aid to create a series of pillows with artwork from their roster of artists and raise money for their mission to help artists with AIDS. I also worked with Creative Growth in Oakland to create a collection of pillows from the artwork of their artists with developmental challenges.

In March of 2017 I had the honor of presenting a one-man exhibit, “LARGER THAN LIFE”, at the Strut Gallery featuring eight San Francisco drag queens I photographed and made into tapestry portraits. The office of Senator Scott Wiener then invited me to exhibit “LARGER THAN LIFE” in June for Pride month at his State Building Office. In June of 2017 I was asked to do a portrait for one of the victims of the Pulse Nightclub tragedy at an exhibit and auction entitled “PULSE: Acts of Love and Kindness”.

In October of 2017, I curated an exhibit called “Housing” with 18 San Francisco Bay Area artists, including myself, for the office of Senator Scott Wiener. This exhibit looks at the Bay Area as this place we call home but has become increasing difficult for artists and other individuals to afford.

Joseph Abbati Bio

The drawings, which I am turning into paintings, are about form, contour, and color. They use minimal detail to convey their subject. The work is a series diverse queer men’s bodies. Naked. Vulnerable. Intimate. Exposed. They explore our fetishes and desires. They look at the intimate contact between us. The vulnerable side of our humanity. The naked openness of who we are. These illustrations were inspired by the over 50,000 photos I have collected and were posted on my Tumblr account “A Beautiful Indiscretion.” That account has since been removed because Tumblr has censored “adult content.” These paintings are a way to document that time when they were more accessible.