Leather Week at SF’s Castro Magnet features Jok Church MENdalas

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 Magnet, the men’s health clinic slash community center slash art gallery in the Castro, is featuring an exhibit of digital prints on stretched canvases by the quirky, multi-talented Jok Church. A long-time gay activist, Church is also a Leatherman, a cartoonist and the creator of the children’s TV science series Beakman’s World. His web design includes the sites for the French artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude and  for the local watercolorist Richard Bolingbroke.

Church calls these highly-manipulated photographs MENdalas, a take-off on the meditative mandalas of Hindu and Buddhist iconography.  The show opened with a splashy reception that drew such luminaries as Donna Sachet, the first lady in red of San Francisco drag, and Mark Leno, State senator for district 3, which includes the city and county of San Francisco and Marin and Sonoma counties. Church is donating 100% of sales to Magnet and to the Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy. Sales were brisk at the opening, with more than half the work sold by evening’s end. Sister Dana Van Iquity, SOPI, wrote a review for the San Francisco Bay Times. The show continues at Magnet, located at 4122 18th Street at Castro, through the end of September.