Live Art at Bill’s Schedule
LA@Bs (Live Art at Bills) has been a regular part of the gallery’s curatorial program since opening in 2020. Arning is a product of museum thinking and culture in which hosting other art forms creates otherwise unforeseeable new meanings and serves the exhibiting visual artists desire to reach outside of the indoctrinated contemporary audience.
July 27th Poetry
Sunday, July 6th at 5:00 PM - Poetry
Hymns & Incantations: a poetry reading by Mark Doty and Marie Howe
Marie Howe is the author New and Selected Poems, which has just won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.
( W.W. Norton 2024.) which includes poems from her four previous books.
From 2012-2014, she served as the Poet Laureate of New York State. She is the poet in residence at The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, and a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
“Marie Howe's poetry is luminous, intense, and eloquent, rooted in an abundant inner life. Her long, deep-breathing lines address the mysteries of flesh and spirit, in terms accessible only to a woman who is very much of our time and yet still in touch with the sacred.”
—Stanley Kunitz
Mark Doty’s ten books of poetry include Fire To Fire: New & Selected Poems, which won the National Book Award in 2008. He has also published five books of nonfiction prose, most recently What is the Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life, which NPR called “a celebration of gay manhood, queerness, and the power and elasticity of poetry,"
Mark Doty
Marie Howe
August 24th - Book Reading
Sunday August 24th 5PM
Roddy Bottum Reads from his upcoming memoir The Royal We
About The Royal We
THE ROYAL WE is a poetic survey of a time set in a magical city that once was and is no more. It is a memoir written by Roddy Bottum, a musician and artist, that documents through prose his coming of age and out of the closet in 1980s San Francisco, a charged era of bicycle messengers, punk rock, street witches, wheatgrass, and rebellion. The book follows his travels from Los Angeles, growing up gay with no role models, to San Francisco, where he formed Faith No More and went on to tour the world relentlessly, surviving heroin addiction and the plight of AIDS, to become a queer icon.
The book is an elevated wallop of tongue and insight, much more than a tell-all. There are personal tales of historical pinnacles like Kurt and Courtney, Guns N’ Roses, and recaps of gold records and arena rock—but it’s the testimonies of tragedy and addiction and preposterous life-spins that make this work so unique and intriguing. Bottum writes about his dark and harrowing past in a clear-eyed voice that is utterly devoid of self-pity, and his emboldened and confident pronouncements of achievement and unorthodox heroism flow in an unstoppable train that’s both captivating and inspirational.
A remarkable portrayal of a creative individual in emergence, a gay man figuring out how to be a gay man, and a detailed look at the nuance of 1980s pre–tech boom San Francisco, The Royal We will be greatly appreciated by people who loved Kathleen Hanna’s Rebel Girl, Patti Smith’s Just Kids, Hua Hsu’s Stay True, and other memoirs about the artist’s life.
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RODDY BOTTUM is a musician, writer, creator, and actor based in New York City. He started the band Faith No More in San Francisco in the early 1980s and toured the world, selling millions of records. In 1992, he came out of the closet and blew open the spectrum of what being gay in the world of rock music meant. That same year he also formed the critically acclaimed band Imperial Teen, cited as the original pioneers of alternative queer rock. Bottum moved to New York City in 2010 and has performed and created records with CRICKETS, Nastie Band, and MAN ON MAN, a band with his partner, Joey Holman. He is developing his Sasquatch opera project into a musical in New York City, where he continues to live.
Past events
July 13 Performance
Sunday, July 6th at 5:00 PM - Performance with Music
David Mramor / Enid Ellen
escaping the quotidian-
Look at Miss Ohio
Listening to music on my headphones while riding the Citi Bike through the streets of NYC. No helmet I sing out loud. “Are you a dancer?” He asks me with a grin. I have them all fooled. Living out this fantasy with my rag top down. I wanna do right, but not right now.
escaping the quotidian- Look at Miss Ohio is the latest performance by artist David Mramor. Questioning ideas of private vs public, exploring the everyday through the fantasy of the imagination, voice and movement as well as aspects of drag vs the everyday drag will be incorporated evoking different time periods and people within queer history.
Mramor writes original songs under the Enid Ellen guise—a post-gender feminist singer-songwriter. With a background in theater, the artist’s performances include singing, movement, improvisation, and elements of dance, fitness and yoga.
David Mramor
July 6th Music
Sunday, July 6th at 5:00 PM - Music
THE SHAKER is the punk / folk /ambient noise project of Simi Stone, Philip Marshall & Nick Flynn— it shouldn’t work, but it does.
June 22 Theater
Sunday, June 22nd at 5:00 PM - Theater
Austin Jennings A Gay Masseur’s Guide To Happy Endings
A Gay Masseur’s Guide to Happy Endings is a biting, darkly funny, and unapologetically raw solo show from actor and comedian Austin Jennings Boykin (FX, HBO, CBS, Amazon). Based on his real-life experiences as a gay masseur, Austin invites audiences into a world that’s equal parts erotic, eccentric, and emotionally exposed.
A Gay Masseur’s Guide to Happy Endings is a darkly funny, biting, deeply personal solo show from actor/comedian Austin Jennings Boykin, that explores the intimate (and often ridiculous) world of gay massage. Based on true events, the piece blends memoir, stand-up, and monologue-driven theater to unpack how we navigate desire, boundaries, capitalism, and connection.
