Artists from Puerto Rico:

Artists from California

Tony Bergquist
Alexandra Blum
Francisco Dominguez
Juan Fuentes
Gato
Art Hazelwood
Veronica Orozco & John Harkins
Patrick Piazza
Calixto Robles
Jos Sances
Marsha Shaw
Eunice Soto-Ralat

Mission Grafica presents a political poster exchange between artists of the Bay Area and Puerto Rico. Mission Grafica at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts has been a cultural bridge for graphic artists between the Bay Area and Latin America for the past thirty years. Eunice Soto-Ralat, who recently moved to San Francisco from Puerto Rico and now runs Mission Grafica, is the perfect bridge builder for this current project. She has organized an exchange of screenprint posters between seventeen artists in Puerto Rico and thirteen in the Bay Area. The thirty artists have agreed to create political posters specifically for this exchange around the title and theme, Arte de la Democracia/Art of Democracy. All the artists work will be on display both at Mission Grafica’s Galeria Zapatistaand at Area Gallery in Caguas, Puerto Rico starting from October 3.

The artists from the Bay Area include two previous directors of Mission Grafica well known for their powerful political graphics, Jos Sances and Juan Fuentes. Elizam Escobar is one of the best known political artists in Puerto Rico. The exploration of the theme of art and democracy by these artists will create a provocative exhibition.

The exhibition is part of a national coalition of political art exhibitions called the Art of Democracy www.artofdemocracy.org that are taking place between now and the elections. The coalition includes more than fifty exhibitions from museums and galleries to libraries and universities, and spans the country including Vashon Island, Washington, Muncie, Indiana, Plymouth, New Hampshire, Tucson Arizona, Chicago, Atlanta and seven others in the Bay Area. Arte de la Democracia/Art of Democracy.