Jos Sances

Mariners, Renegades and Castaways, by Jos Sances

2015

Jos Sances was born John Joseph Sances in Boston and attended Montserrat School of Visual Art in Beverly, Massachusetts. For more than 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. Jos is also a founding and lifelong member of the Great Tortilla Conspiracy - a political performance group that produces satirical edible art screen printed with chocolate on tortillas. In 2010 and 2016 the Library of Congress acquired nearly 500 of Sances’ prints that broadly represent his output. His work has been exhibited widely, including the show “Committed to Print” at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. In 2022 he was invited to show his work at La Sorbonne, Université, in Paris. 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 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 2015 and 2016 three screen printed tile murals and workshops were done in Todos Santos, Baja, Mexico, as well as the Shoruq Cultural Center in Dheisheh Refugee Camp.