Monarch Bear Grove

October 13, 2026

I have had some success on Social Media. Not a ton, but some. It’s a lot for me. For a very long time I was pretty against it. In graduate school I had deleted my facebook. I never posted on instagram, which I kept but rarely accessed, and my friends and I had developed a culture over the years of not documenting our time because we felt it would help us live in the moment more. 

When I decided to take art seriously as a profession, I realized that social media was necessary. In previous generations, artists had needed to rely on building relationships with gallery owners, or institutions in order to get their work in front of people who might be interested in purchasing it. They relied on these people to tell their story for them, and they were at the mercy of these (often rare) opportunities. 

Now, social media makes it possible to speak directly to people who may be interested in your work and story. The artist becomes responsible for their own image, and there is freedom and responsibility that come along with that. 

When I started, sometimes I would receive only a handful of views after hours of painting and editing. I kept trying and kept posting because I believed that eventually if I worked hard enough for long enough, it would start to work. TikTokers call this phase ‘climbing cringe mountain’, and liken it to exposure therapy. I definitely think there is something to that. 

Suddenly, recently, I started seeing growth. Despite my prejudices about social media and its superficiality, I noticed that this growth perfectly coincided with my decision to start posting content that felt very authentically ‘me’. 

What does this have to do with the Monarch Bear Grove area of Golden Gate Park? This week, since my social media started taking off, a local photographer reached out and offered to take my picture as a way to help me promote my work. He said he thought it was a great idea for a project, and wanted to help me out. 

So we went to Monarch Bear Grove! The grove itself is small, but packed with history. It used to be the home of Monarch, a grizzly bear that was captured and kept in captivity there by media magnate William Randolph Hearst. 

For years people believed that Monarch was the bear on the California state flag, but they recently determined that this was actually a different bear, named Samson. Monarch is now taxidermied across the street in the California Academy of the Sciences. 

The grove is wooded, with long smooth curving tree trunks that dip and bow towards the earth. It is a favorite place for squirrels, and I encountered many of them as I walked in the shade of the trees. Some ran along the treeline above me, dropping bits of leaf matter as they scurried across. Some were not shy at all, and walked leisurely by my feet. 

I was there around 4pm, golden hour. During this time of day, everything feels more vibrant, and more alive. The sun collapses into every living thing. I thought about the bear Monarch, and whether or not he had a favorite place in the grove. I wondered if he knew this big stump that now held a tiny sapling, when it was still a massive tree.