David Ireland is a carpe diem kind of artist and like most good artists is also kind of off his rocker.

His greatest body of work by far was his home of thirty years on 500 Capp Street, San Francisco where some of the greatest artists of his generation met and did weird stuff. Ireland bought the house for $50,000 in 1975 with the intention of gutting it, but soon the house convinced him otherwise. Full of a bunch of junk from the previous accordion-maker/hoarder tenants, Ireland began to see everything in the house as raw material. The separation between art and his life began to blur and then everything Ireland touched became art. Like Midas but without the sad ending. 500 Capp Street is now one of the only buildings in San Fran that hasn’t been turned into row upon row of windowless, kitchenless “apartments.” It was however, been turned into a David Ireland landmark after his death in 2009.

For most of his life, Ireland was a closeted artist. First he was an insurance salesman, a member of the US Army, an African safari guide, a husband and a father...but none of that was his calling. He fished around for what he wanted to be until his forties when he went to the San Francisco Art Institute and everything began to make sense. It must've been quite the a-ha moment because Ireland spent the rest of his life making art and trying to forget his days as an insurance salesman.