Agent Provocateur

Photo by Jeff Singer

There’s a good reason David Steele’s friends find him, by his own admission, “annoying” (and it may be for more than the fact that he’s still using the Seinfeldian term “yada yada yada” in daily conversation). “My friends know me to be a deeply caring person,” says the 41-year-old managing director of a major investment bank. “But I’m also opinionated and argumentative. I like to provoke thinking.” Unsurprisingly, this self-proclaimed “black sheep of banking” has amassed a modest collection in his Mission Dolores home composed of works by local artists that feature such peculiar juxtapositions as geishas gone goth (Jenn Porreca) and Wonderland-inspired characters in Twilight Zone quandaries (Wendi Spiers). “I enjoy irony and disjunction,” he says.

We’ll say. Though the finance whiz is the son of an orchestral musician and a sculptor, he expresses his art gene more behind the scenes, as a collector and patron. Steele is on the board of directors for ArtSpan, the nonprofit that organizes San Francisco’s Open Studios event each October (artspan.org). “As soon as I started making any money in my career, I began buying beautiful pieces by local artists for $100 or $200,” says Steele, who spent 10 years managing top restaurants in his hometown of Philadelphia and five years on Wall Street before moving to San Francisco in 1995. “It was a great way to inexpensively fill my house with art, but it also made me realize that the artists must be making very little money.” In 2004, after nearly a decade of purchasing works by Open Studios artists, Steele donated close to $10,000 to ArtSpan. “I found it astonishing that the organization was so tiny and unrecognized,” says Steele, who also chairs ArtSpan’s prestigious Selections Exhibition, a biennial show featuring the works of 20 local up-and-comers.

While Steele’s past fund-raising efforts have taken the form of extreme-sports challenges (befitting an avid heli-snowboarder, mountain biker and former competitive triathlete) his upcoming ArtSpan-sponsored mural competition doubles as public relations for his soon-to-open Mission District eatery, Flour + Water. Taking a cue from the restaurant Nopa (which features a Brian Barneclo mural in its mezzanine), Steele—who is also a partner at the SoMa eatery South and is currently working on his Court of Master Advanced Sommelier certificate—will dedicate the back wall of the new pizzeria to the winning artist’s painting. “You’ve got food, art, philanthropy,” he says. “The ultimate intersection of what makes SF great.”