About
Welcome to the Berkeley City College Visual Art Department. Our program features studio classes, art history classes, a Certificate in Figure Drawing, and many talented faculty.
Photo: Juana Alicia ©2008
Juana Alicia Araiza
BCC Office: 552
Email: juanaaliciaa@gmail.com
juanaalicia.com
http://juanaaliciaatcentro.wordpress.com/
Artist Statement and Biography
“I am a muralist, printmaker, educator, activist, and painter who loves to draw. I have been teaching for twenty-five years, working in many areas of education, from community organizing to migrant and bilingual education to arts education, from kindergarten to graduate school levels.
I feel that it is my responsibility as an artist to be an activist for social justice, human rights, and environmental health, and I see the work of parenting and teaching akin to being an artist. I began working as an artist in my teens, coming of age in the human rights movements that included the United Farm Workers and that protested the war in Vietnam.
I work 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. The majority of my public works are in the Bay Area, but I have also painted murals in other parts of the world, including Managua, Nicaragua. Some of my works are individual and others are collaborative.
I make murals with groups because of the learning that process provides me. It forces me to think and see from other minds and eyes, and to stretch my emotional capacities and communication skills. I also learn new techniques from other muralists and artisans. Naturally, a group or collaborative process allows one to take on a more monumental work and lightens the burden that the individual artist would also have to bear, vis a vis community relations, administration, documentation, and the actual execution of the work. No matter whether the work is solo or collaborative, it gives me great joy to contribute to the urban environments in an effort to humanize our public spaces.”
Juana Alicia has been painting murals and teaching for thirty years. Her sculptural and painted public works can be seen in Nicaragua, Mexico, Pennsylvania, and many parts of California, most notably in San Francisco.
Juana Alicia has taught mural painting, art history, and social history and theory at San Francisco State University, Stanford University, and the University of California at Davis and Santa Cruz. She co-founded and co-directed the East Bay Institute for Urban Arts. She is currently full-time faculty at Berkeley City College, and directs the True Colors Mural Project, a public arts program.
La Llorona’s Sacred Waters, Juana Alicia ©2004, San Francisco Mission District, York and 24th Streets.
Some of her recent murals include SANARTE at U.C.S.F. Medical Center, SANTUARIO (with Emmanuel Montoya) at the San Francisco International Airport, LA LLORONA’S SACRED WATERS at 24th and York Streets in the Mission of San Francisco, and GEMELOS (with Araiza) at the Metropolitan Technical University in Mérida, Mexico. Her newest work, HUEHUETLATOLI: WISDOM OF THE ELDERS, is slated for installation at University and Sacramento in Berkeley, California.
For Satellite Senior Housing mural: Huehuetlatolli: The Wisdom of Elders, Alma/Soul, bas relief sculpture, Juana Alicia©2007
For more info, please see the website: juanaalicia.com
Blessing Ceremony for True Colors Mural at Mi Tierra Foods [http://www.flickr.com/photos/pueblonuevo/5088012967/]
Flickr Library: http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=juana+alicia&m=text
True Colors Mural Project: http://truecolorsmuralproject.wordpress.com/
Juana Alicia in front of Inkworks Mural: Posters of Resistance: Visions of Peace and Justice, 2010, Berkeley City College and Earth Island Institute
M. Louise Stanley
1420 45th Street #29
Emeryville, CA 94608
(510)658-8468
lulu@locrian.com
http://artist-at-large.com/members/lulu/
http://mlouisestanley.com/
Artist’s Statement
My work follows in the tradition of history and narrative painting documenting current and fictitious events using myth and allegory. The human condition, modern-day romance, and political issues are often explored. Voyeurism, a longing to ‘be someplace else’, and a sense of places and events remembered are recurring themes. Humor is the catalyst and a bridge to the darker, more troubling side. In my youth, I wanted to make paintings people would gag and cry in front of until I saw two women doubled-up laughing in front of my work. At an opening years ago a woman came up to me, drink in hand, and said, “these are not funny paintings, they remind me of junior high when I was miserable.” Then she dropped her glass at my feet and ran out of the gallery. Over the years I have observed that depending on who the viewer is, the same painting will elicit completely opposite reactions. At an opening at PS1 in New York, years ago, Joyce Kosloff said, “God, lulu, your work is so American!” I strive for that precarious line between the downright silly and the sublime, perhaps in order to sabotage both extremes, but more often just to see if I can pull it off.
Recent paintings are based on research gathered during the annual ‘Art Lover’s Tours’ I organize and lead to Europe and an interest in the transformation myths of Ovid, sainthood, the ills of organized religion, and current events. I keep an ongoing series of sketchbooks full of gouache and gold leaf studies after the ‘old masters’. Standing in front of the actual painting, tracing the steps an artist has traveled, is my way of owning the painting, taking it home, and the closest thing to having a conversation with a dead artist.
For information on future ‘Art Lover’s Tours’ contact me at lulu@locrian.com. Paintings and Journals can be viewed at: artist-at-large.com/members/lulu/ and http://mlouisestanley.com/
Anatomy Lesson, acrylic/c 72" X 96", M. Louise Stanley, ©2003
