Juana Alicia

Juana Alicia, Artist Statement

 I work in many different media to create both private and public works of art. These include drawing, printmaking, small-format painting, monumental acrylic, fresco, tile and sculptural murals and other sculptural forms.  My work evolved from the streets of San Francisco’s Mission District, whose mural renaissance is legendary, to installations in other parts of the U.S. and Latin America. I began painting acrylic murals, and expanded to ceramics, bas relief, cement and metal sculpture. I seek to create more and more architectonic and sculptural works in a cityscape with an increasingly green and sustainable urban vision.

 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 Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico and Managua, Nicaragua. Some of my works are individual and others are collaborative.

 I am most known for my large public murals and mosaic installations created in the U.S. and Latin America. I frequently collaborate with other artists: on the San Francisco Women's Building mural, Maestrapeace: on the Sanctuary/Santuario mural at the San Francisco International Airport with Emmanuel C. Montoya; and on the Gemelos/Twins mural in Mérida, Yucatán, with Tirso Gonzalez Araiza. Araiza and I constitute a collaborative team for public art installations, named Divine Intervention/Intervención Divina.