Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

Derick Ion is a Bay Area photographer and visionary whose work has been exhibited extensively. Ion creates realms and experiences that bring audiences into direct connection with his subjects. Ion, working with photographs and artifacts, created this artful space that invites and engages all of us to re-center, decompress, and, for moments in time, live the arts. Ion's works are clearly modern yet embody the eternal spirits of the people and places he has captured, closing a circle and connecting our present to the wellspring of the human journey. Ion is a self-taught photographer, arts organizer, nomad and alchemist who relocates with his family for months at a time to Asia and Africa. He has previously exhibited at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. He runs galleries in different parts of the world, including an arts collective alternative space in West Oakland called Satya Yuga, and creates artwork and installations for the Lightning in a Bottle festival, Burning Man, and the Day of the Dead Festival. He is always just on the verge of creating or participating in something fantastically (un)real.