Juana Alicia
Juana Alicia is a muralist, printmaker, educator, activist and painter
who loves to draw. She has an MFA and Masters in Education and has been
teaching for twenty-five years. Juana began working as an artist in
her teens; coming of age in the human rights movements that included
the United Farm Workers and protested the war in Vietnam. She works
in many forms and traditions, with a particular dedication to the fresco
buono, an ancient painting technique that, practiced all over the world,
has endured many centuries.
Juana’s work is featured in numerous publications and has been
shown in galleries and museums all over the United States, including
the Mexican Museum in San Francisco, the Mexican Fine Arts Museum in
Chicago, and the Guadalupe Art Center of San Antonio, Texas. Juana’s
murals can be found throughout the world, including, “Sanctuary/Santuario,”
a bas relief sculpture with Emmanuel C. Montoya located at the San Francisco
International Airport. Currently, Juana is working on a mural for the
University of San Francisco’s Medical Center.
Prints, posters, and art cards of Juana’s work are available.
www.juanaalicia.com
Jill Bliss
Jill grew up on a family farm in northern California - where everything
from the food, the house, the farm machinery, and even the family computers
were hand built or cultivated. Teen years in the suburban wastelands
of Silicon Valley gave way to a few years in San Francisco and then
New York. Now based again in San Francisco, Jill’s design aesthetic
blends cross-disciplinary education and professional training in fashion
design, graphic design, product design, and illustration. Whether designing
limited edition paper goods and accessories or fine art pieces, all
of her work belies a fondness for combining fabric, paper, and other
found materials. Drawing, sewing, and meticulous hand-craftsmanship
are all put to use while attempting to rekindle human interest in the
small details within natural and handmade objects.
Jill Bliss goods can be found in the MOCA Museum Store, the SFMOMA Museum
Store, and the Columbus Museum of Art Store, as well as in boutique
stores located in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Oregon.
www.jillbliss.com
Flower Frankenstein
Flower Frankenstein created BikiniKat in 1998. People liked the character
so much that Flower opened a store in San Francisco entirely based off
the character for the next two years. The store was unique not only
because it was painted from top to bottom in pink but also because Flower
created hand-made dolls, clothing, prints and books based off BikiniKat's
adventures in her art studio in the back of the store.
People from all over the world visited the store; it was listed in Fodor's
travel guide between F.A.O. Schwartz and Sanrio, and Flower knew BikiniKat
had a mind of her own when one customer had taken the doll on vacation
and brought back photos of BikiniKat at exciting tourist sites. Soon
customers sent postcards and photos to BikiniKat, even a bike group
named their team, Team BikiniKat, for a charity bike ride down the coast
of California.
Flower changed gears and closed the store to pursue BikiniKat in Smart
Sassy Stylish proportions and will be launching the first novel of a
series in 2006 titled BikiniKat VS. The Super Ugly Beautifuls. She is
focused on licensing motivational products based off BikiniKat's philosophy
of life the core being her Smart Sassy Stylish Shiny Shield A Go Go.
A shield that protects her fans from negative vibes, mean people, funny
smells and karate chops.
www.bikinikat.com
Ester Hernandez
Ester Hernandez is a San Francisco artist and graduate of UC Berkeley.
She is best known for her depiction of women through pastels and prints,
which reflect political, social, ecological and spiritual themes. Her
iconic “Sun Mad” is one of the most widely recognized images
of the Chicano movimiento.
She has had numerous solo and group shows throughout the U.S. and internationally.
Her work is included in the permanent collections of the National Museum
of American Art - Smithsonian, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Mexican
Museum- San Francisco and Chicago and the Frida Kahlo Studio Museum
in Mexico City. For the past 17 years she has been teaching at Creativity
Explored of San Francisco, a visual art center for developmentally disabled
adults.
Currently, Ester’s work is featured in “Chicano” an
unprecedented exhibition of Chicano art from Cheech Marin’s personal
collection, presented by Target Stores. Chicano is a five-year, 15 city
national tour.
www.esterhernandez.com
Paula Malesardi
Paula Malesardi was born and raised in New York. She earned her BFA in painting and printmaking from School of Visual Arts in 1998, and moved to San Francisco shortly thereafter. Her work resides in the interstice where the disciplines of drawing, painting, printmaking, and textiles converge.
Paula designs and produces Allma, a line of hand silk-screened clothing and accessories. Graceful, utilitarian shapes characterize her designs. Her silk-screened images are recollective yet timeless, a reflection on everyday things, referencing flora, fauna, seasons, and atmospheres.
Paula’s designs have been featured in boutiques throughout San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York, at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and in Lucky, 7x7, and the SF Bay Guardian. Her artwork also appears on CD covers and skateboards.
www.allmagoods.com
Pablo Manga
Working with colored adhesive tape from Mexico City, Pablo creates
densely textured and richly patterned striations and fields of color.
Both vibrant and soothing, his pieces are engaging studies of mood and
energy that evoke abstract landscapes, textiles, and op art.
Each piece has a unique quality of volume, depth, and color, ranging
from bold reds and deep blues, to soft yellows. Pablo’s images
shape their environment, creating atmosphere through his rich use of
color and texture. There is also a design quality to his work that combines
minimalism with bold colors and patterns. His imagery is especially
complementary to light catching products such as umbrellas, shower curtains
and lighting fixtures.
Pablo has shown his work in Mexico City and at the Galería de
la Raza in San Francisco.
Aaron Noble
Inspired by comic book imagery, Aaron Noble's wall paintings incorporate
superhero body parts morphed, stretched, and free floating in a 'negative
space' landscape. He is well known in San Francisco for his earlier
WPA-styled outdoor murals depicting the city's labor history. Now his
interests involve contemporary popular street culture, Western comic
art, Japanese anime and manga, video games, and technology.
Aaron Noble executed his first mural in the Czech Republic during a
performance tour in 1991 and became one of the founders of the Clarion
Alley Mural Project, in San Francisco, in 1992. In addition to his public
works, Noble’s work has been exhibited in San Francisco at Southern
Exposure, Balazo Gallery, New Langton Arts and The Lab; in Los Angeles
at the UCLA Hammer Museum and Blum and Poe Gallery; and internationally
in Prague, Czech Republic and Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Noble lives and works
in Los Angeles.
Sirron Norris
Ohio-born Sirron's work offers a probing look at the world, humanitarian
in its appeal to childhood fantasy, with a buoyant vibrancy that belies
the harsher themes Sirron explores through personal narration and a
style he dubs "Cartoon Literalism." Sirron graduated from
the Art Institute of Pittsburgh in 1993 and has worked in the fashion
photography, graphic design, and video game industries. Including time
at Presage, a children's educational games developer, drawing licensed
Doctor Seuss, Super Mario Brother and Madeline characterizations. Sirron
also works closely with today’s youth as a teacher and mentor
and has taught at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Southern Exposure,
the Palo Alto Arts Center, Richmond Art Center and Oakland School for
the Arts.
Sirron is well known for his murals that appear throughout San Francisco’s
Mission District and beyond, and has shown his work in numerous galleries,
including San Francisco’s Luggage Store Gallery. Sirron has also
secured several residencies including a residency at Golden Gate Park's
De-Young Memorial Museum and is a professional illustrator, whose work
includes the "Red Gorilla" character, as well as work for
Comedy Central, Sun Microsystems, Skyy Vodka, and MTV.
Sirron’s characters appear as stickers, toys, on t-shirts, and
in other media, including television and print.
www.sirronnorris.com
Michael V. Rios
Michael V. Rios is a native of Oakland, California, born on December
10th, 1947. He attended the prestigious San Francisco Academy of Art
College from 1964 to 1966. Upon graduation from the Academy, Michael
worked as an illustrator for the famous San Francisco men’s clothier,
Roos Atkins. Rios then opened his own commercial art and graphics studio
in San Francisco, creating children’s books, billboards, Fuller/O’Brien
paint ads and other “high end” commercial art. It wasn’t
long after that Michael became a creative partner in Union Street’s
“Winston, Rios & Brown”.
After returning from an extensive trip to Europe, he found his way to
the Mission District of San Francisco. Rios began taking an active interest
in his new environment. His years of creating billboards were natural
transition for his new “mission in the Mission”. Rios created
some of the first large murals that made the Mission District famous
and his effort to “beautify the place I live in” brought
him national attention.
It 1986, Michael Rios and Carlos Santana came together. To celebrate
the 20th anniversary of Santana, Rios created the mural Inspire To Aspire,
located on South Van Ness and 22nd Streets. Musical heroes, icons and
symbols common to those who lived in the Mission are represented in
this creation that spans three buildings. It was the inspiration for
what became a beautiful friendship and a long, artistic collaboration
between the musician and the painter.
Michael Rios' licensed artwork has appeared on women's, men's and children's
clothing, men's ties, towels, drum kits, congas, bongos, guitars, official
NASCAR racing cars, diecast racing cars and trailers, coffee cups, wine
bottles, incense packaging, flags, puzzles, clocks, hats, jackets, greetings
cards, postcards, stickers, calendars, pins, screen savers, duffle bags,
backpacks, shower curtains, bed covers, rugs and many other items. Let
Michael Rios help you to increase sales with licensed art on your products.
There exists unlimited uses of Michael Rios' licensed artwork, such
as wallpaper, printed fabrics, clothing, decorative tins, storage containers,
waste baskets, soap dishes, lampshades and many more.
www.mvrios.com
Elba Rivera
Elba Rivera is a San Francisco-based artist known for her mural paintings,
which have been featured in numerous publications and on television,
including on Bay Area Backroads. Rivera is also known for her colorful
surrealist oil and acrylic paintings, which have appeared in several
galleries and in “Latin American Women Artists Of The United States,”
by Robert Henkes. Her work depicts themes concerning women, the environment,
the city, fantasmagoria, and Latina culture. Originally from El Salvador,
Rivera has lived in the Mission District of San Francisco for forty
years. She is active in her community and has participated in exhibitions
for several local nonprofits. Rivera’s work is available for commission.
Isabel Samaras
Best known for lush and meticulously painted riffs on Old Masters that
send up pop culture icons of the '70s, Isabel Samaras finds her saucy
drawings and illustrations increasingly in demand. Her work is known
to a broad audience through publications like Juxtapoz magazine, as
well as her own book “Devil Babe’s Big Book of Fun!”,
winner of the Firecracker Book Award for Best Art Book and currently
enjoying it’s fourth print run. Her art adorns lunch boxes, tin
TV trays, calendars and, in the form of tattoos, countless hipsters
bodies. The mischievous women in her art are often a representation
of what Samaras refers to as “the inner minx in all of us.”
Her paintings and drawings have appeared on posters for Aerosmith, the
Rolling Stones, the Cramps, and Red Hot Chili Peppers and have been
exhibited extensively across American as well as in Europe and Canada.
Critics have described her work as tart, clever, and pure unfiltered
sass.
Sound Bites about Devil Babe:
"With her trademark, whimsical Devil Babe, a sort of That Girl
with horns, Samaras lets you know upfront what to expect from her and
her work -- a little mischief and wry take on life -- or rather pop-culture
sublife."
Cups Magazine
"Samaras' forte is depicting foxy mermaids and horned temptresses
in hot pants, but even as she revels in the beauty of the female form,
she somehow always manages to subvert the passive gaze with a dash of
humor."
New York Press
"Reminiscent of Betty Page and pin-up girl art from the 40s and
50s, Samaras' Devil Babes range from the slightly naughty to the highly
erotic."
Boulder Weekly
www.devilbabe.com
