Kate Connell and Oscar Melara, collaborating as Book and Wheel, have rooted their practice in Southeast San Francisco since 1996. Native San Franciscans, they met as artists in San Francisco’s Mission District, where Oscar co-founded La Raza Silkscreen Center and Kate worked for the Galería de la Raza. The name of their collaboration, Book and Wheel, comes from their past professions as a librarian and a bus driver. It reflects their interests in artists books, bicycling, and mobile art: art aboard buses and art carts. They collaborate with visual and performing artists, writers, libraries, archives and trade unions. As long-term union members, they consider the community of colleagues and neighbors they work with as their Laborhood.

Book and Wheel employs various strategies– mobile cultural platforms (buses, carts) with tours and live events, participatory maps, games, public murals and a growing regional print portfolio. Their most recent project, Chispa, is an art cart the size of a parade float, which debuted at the Visitation Valley Greenway and appeared again at the 2019 Chispa Autumn Moon Celebration in McLaren Park, both in San Francisco. Their pandemic swivel project, We Trade continues the Chispa art trade practice, offering contact-free art trading to promote cultural production during shelter-in-place and into the future.