San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
IN CELEBRATION OF WOMEN
Political convictions led S.F. native to art and eventually to largescale murals
We’ve all seen the headlines about people leaving the Bay Area: artists and teachers, families and 20somethings fleeing the housing shortage, the cost of living and the traffic. What about the people who are staying put? In this occasional column, Creative Lives, we talk to creative professionals about living in a rapidly changing Bay Area, why they stay and how they make it work.
Name: Jessica Sabogal
Work: Muralist
Home: Oakland
Years in the Bay Area: 32
Why I stay: I was born in San Francisco. My family and my elders in the art world who raised me to become an artist are all here.
The little girl in the painting is smiling, her eyes full of light and hope. Her hair creates a beautiful halo of warm brown, sepia and taupe, framing her upturned face. That image, underscored by the words “Women are Perfect,” is part of a series of images celebrating women by Jessica Sabogal, a Colombian American muralist. Sabogal’s highimpact images and murals capture the eye, then refocus it on critical issues like immigration, feminism and human rights.
Sabogal jokingly calls “Women are Perfect” her onehitwonder. Prints, tote bags, Tshirts and pins emblazoned with the phrase have flown off the digital shelves of her website since she launched the series in 2014. But “onehit” is far from accurate. She’s been commissioned to paint murals in cities in the United States and around the world and has created installations and posters for clients ranging from movie studios and political groups to Facebook.
Sabogal’s art initially grew from her political convictions, starting when she was a premed student at UC San Diego. “I realized the world was not an equitable place for someone like me, a lesbian who is the daughter of two immigrants,” she says. She changed her major to political science, hoping to make a difference through activism. After graduating in 2009, Sabogal began experimenting with painting, inspired by the social activism of street artists like Banksy and Shepard Fairey (she went on to collaborate on a project with Fairey in 2017). “I saw how they could put out a simple image and create a highly political message,” she says. “So, I went to Home Depot and bought some spray paint and started working alone in my basement. No one told me what cap to use with which stroke, or about color theory. I learned it all from books and YouTube.”
Transforming walls
There’s a tattoo on the back of Sabogal’s neck — two fronds of acacia forming an “X.” The same image appears in her paintings. The acacia, a tree that survives in deserts around the world, represents the omnipresence and resilience of the people whose stories inspire her. “A lot of the work I do is ephemeral,” she says. “It’ll be up for a month then get whitewalled. But the stories of the people I paint are forever, regardless of how long the mural itself lasts.”
Some of her murals, however, become longlasting community icons. During a 2017 street art festival in Montreal, Sabogal painted an image of an indigenous woman holding a sign with the words “White Supremacy is Killing Me” over one eye. The mural was tagged with racist language within days, but Sabogal’s friends quickly repaired it. Then it was defaced again, this time with bright red paint to create the illusion of dripping blood.
The residents of the Montreal community were incensed, and a neighborhood Facebook group started a GoFundMe. Within 30 hours, they had raised enough to have the mural re
paired and coated with a permanent antigraffiti finish; the 12,000member Facebook group still uses an image of Sabogal’s mural as its cover photo. “It was incredible,” Sabogal says of the community reaction. “I just did a mural about how I was feeling, and people had an amazing response. It felt so powerful.”
Trailblazing
The road to becoming a muralist wasn’t easy. After graduating from college in 2009 during the recession, Sabogal moved to Northampton, Mass., with her thenpartner and began balancing three jobs to make ends meet. In 2011, a local business owner offered her the use of an empty storefront for a week. Sabogal created a popup shop, selling the painted toys and watercolors she created while teaching herself new artistic techniques. “I made more money at that show than from my other three jobs combined during that week,” she says. “I realized then that if I took the risk to devote 100% of my life to my art, I could make a living.”
A move back to San Francisco was prompted shortly after by the offer of studio space in the Gallería de la Raza by executive director Ani Rivera. “That was someone singlehandedly saying ‘I see you, I believe in you,’ ” Sabogal says. “That moment made it possible for me to become the artist I am today.”
Financial evolution
At first Sabogal took whatever commissions she could to make ends meet. “I’d paint anything for a couple of hundred bucks — your kid, your cat, whatever,” she says, laughing. To survive in the Bay Area, Sabogal saved money by avoiding longterm housing commitments. “I’ve lived in 40 different places over the last 2½ years,” she says. “I was exhausted.” She finally signed a lease in March, paying $1,700 a month in rent. Lowcost studio space is also a critical part of her financial calculus — she spends $360 a month for a large space in the CTRL+SHIFT collective, a coop art studio space in West Oakland.
With large commissions under her belt, Sabogal is now more selective about the projects she takes — and she has the experience to apply for largescale public art projects, with rates that range from $20,000 to $40,000 per installation. “If I can do three or four largescale projects, that’s a good year financially,” she says. Supplemental passive income comes from her screen printing and online shop, though that can be sporadic. “It’s not like I’m making $3,000 a week — it’s small bits of income, and then there’s a big check from a mural.”
But commissions of that size aren’t something all muralists can take on — the months of work and logistics involved in creating a largescale mural can dwarf planning a wedding. “There’s so much that goes into each one,” Sabogal says. “The research, the community outreach, the design, the enlarging and printing of the stencils, the paint quantities, the scaffolding, the lift, hotels for the crew.” Murals are also hard on the body. “I can’t physically do backtoback installations anymore,” she says.
Intense times
Although largescale murals are now her main focus, it took over a year after she quit her jobs for Sabogal to build the courage to paint her first one. A family journey back to Colombia in 2013 gave her the push she needed. “Everything in Colombia is a heightened, intense situation. It’s not like you can just go to the store and get paint,” she says. But Sabogal wanted to honor the women affected by Colombia’s civil war. “I decided if I could do a mural there, I could do it anywhere. So I did a design and cut the stencils, then rolled them up under my arm and got on the plane.” She collaborated with local artists in Bogotá and accomplished her first largescale mural, a 45footby9foot installation.
Echoes of the same heightened intensity she experienced in Colombia are influencing her work today, amid the COVID19 pandemic. “I don’t have access to a COVID test — what does that mean? Access to medical care and resources — I’m thinking about that a lot right now,” she says. But Sabogal also sees a note of hope in the responses she’s witnessing during the crisis. “I know we will endure. We’ve got this. People are really showing up for one another,” she says. “We all have a common enemy now — this virus. Maybe it can unite us.”