the art of Jos sances

bio

Jos Sances was born John Joseph Sances in Boston, attended Montserrat School of Visual Art in Beverly, Massachusetts. For over the past 40 years he has made his living as a Printmaker and Muralist in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Jos is founder of Alliance Graphics, begun in 1989, a successful, union screenprint shop. Previously he co-founded Mission Grafica at the Mission Cultural Center in 1980 and worked there until 1988. All the while maintaining a steady output of art which address issues and ideas which concern him. In 2010 and 2016 the Library of Congress acquired nearly 500 of Sances’ prints that broadly represent his output. Having shown in California venues such as Avenue 50 Gallery in Los Angeles, Vessel Gallery in Oakland, the Richmond Art Center, the American Museum of Ceramic Art, and the Berkeley Art Center, he was included in the show “Committed to Print” at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and was recently invited to show his work at La Sorbonne, Université, Paris in 2022. Sances work is featured in “¡Printing the Revolution! The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics 1965 to Now” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. He is one of the few non-Chicanos whose work is featured in the exhibition.

As an artist and community collaborator for the past 25 years, murals and public art have been Jos's passion. He has painted murals at the Oakland Coliseum and tile mural commissions at the new Juvenile Justice Center in San Leandro, CA; AMTRAK/BART Station, Richmond, CA, the Sixteenth Street BART station in San Francisco. Two tile murals were completed in 2009, at the Castro Valley Library and Arnett Watson Apartments in San Francisco with Art Hazelwood. In 2010 with Daniel Galvez, Jos completed a huge 7000 sq.ft Mural for a new Recreation Center at Ira Jenkins Park in Oakland. In 2011 Sances and Galvez completed a tile and etched metal artwork for Skyline College in San Bruno, CA. In 2015 and 2016 three screenprinted tile murals and workshops were done in Todos Santos, Baja, Mexico. Shoruq Cultural Center in Dheisheh Refugee Camp, Palestine and with students at Berkeley High School in California.

From 2019 to 2021 Sances’ 51’ x 14’ life-size scratchboard drawing of a mature sperm whale was featured at the Richmond Art Center, The Bioneers Conference, the Sebastopol Center for the Arts, all in California, and at the Lawrence Art Center in Lawrence, Kansas.

Jos is proudly a founding and lifelong member of the Great Tortilla Conspiracy. A political performance group that produces satirical edible art screenprinted with chocolate on tortillas.

1. A virtual conversation between "Or, The Whale" artist Jos Sances and Moby-Dick scholar Elizabeth Schultz!... View here >

2. A talk and Q and A, Jos Sances gave in Sebastopol in 2021 View here >

3. Jos Sances’ Great White Whale and High Time to Get to the Sea | East Bay Express | May 2019 | Janis Hashe ”For years, Berkeley printmaker John Joseph “Jos” Sances was fascinated by Herman Melville’s Epic novel…” Read More >

4. The whale Tries to Save Us | San Francisco Chronicle | May 2019 | Charles Desmarais ”Perhaps it was a coordinated campaign. Or maybe several readers were independently moved to share…” Read More >

5. Nel Ventre Della Balena USA (In The Belly USA’s Whale) | II Venerdi di Repubblica (Rome, Italy) | April 2019 | Enrico Diaglio ”I visitatori entrano, per il vernissage, nella sala grande dell’Art Center…” Read More >

• Location: Berkeley, California, USA
• Email: jos@unionbug.com