Meet the Artists of the "Las 3 Hermanas" Art Auction

SAN FRANCISCO — Attendees of “Las 3 Hermanas” Gala Fundraiser will have the opportunity on Sept. 19 to bid on art pieces from a wide scope of female artists. The all-female art show auction is the first of its kind at Mission Housing.

“You cannot truly honor the matriarchal spirit of the Mission at an event named ‘Las 3 Hermanas’ without acknowledging the role women have had for decades in the art scene here,” said Diana Walcott, organizer and curator of the art auction. “We wanted to show gala attendees just how incredibly fortunate we are to live in an area where women play such a prominent part of the culture and life of the Mission.”

Headlining the art show is Susan Kelk Cervantes, a legendary San Francisco artist who will receive one of the “Las 3 Hermanas” Community Award during the Gala Fundraiser. She is the Executive Director of “Precitas Eyes” and her work adorns many a San Francisco wall and building.

“It’s a tremendous honor to have Susan’s participation at the art show,” Walcott said.

Attendees of the 2019 Mission Housing Gala Fundraiser will have a chance to bid on artwork by the following artists:

Marta Ayala - Latin American woman artist specializing in public murals and paintings. Many of her San Francisco murals are part of the Precita Eyes Mural Walk and other work appears in public spaces throughout the Bay Area. A native of El Salvador, Marta has been a resident of San Francisco since 1968. 

Juana Alicia Araiza - Muralist, printmaker, educator, activist and painter who loves to draw, Juana Alicia is a San Francisco legend who has been teaching for thirty years, working in many areas of education, from community organizing to migrant and bilingual education to arts education, from kindergarten to graduate school levels. Currently she is a full-time faculty at Berkeley City College, where she directs a public art program called True Colors.

Jane Norling - Jane Norling lives and works in San Francisco Bay Area and Chicago. She balances painting/print commentary on states of collapse with immersion in the ever-transcendent power of people to move forward.

DJ Agana - Known to the world as AGANA, internationally acclaimed artist Vanessa Solari Espinoza is a multi-dimensional contemporary mural artist.Of Venezuelan descent and hailing from the San Francisco Bay Area, Agana gives public walls vibrant life with her iconic pictorial imagery, bold aesthetics, bursting colors, textual calligraphic gestures and form. At the intersections of street art, graffiti and fine art practices she communicates common social threads via monumental vision.

Naomi Alessandra - Naomi is an artist, illustrator and designer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. With a background in comparative literature and apparel design, her work is character and story-driven, often documenting signifiers of cultural identity to create allegorical snapshots of modern life.Naomi's illustration and design work has spanned the realms of fashion/editorial illustration, book illustration/design, and packaging design.

Colette Crutcher - Colette career began with painting and printmaking, but my work now covers a broad spectrum, from very large to very small, from public to intensely personal, from abstract to figurative, and across a range of media: painting and drawing, collage, assemblage, paper mache, concrete, ceramic and mosaics.

Kavya Ram - Young artist from the Peninsula whose work has been featured at the Boys and Girls Club of the Mid Peninsula. At just 16 years old, Kavya is the youngest artist featured at “Las 3 Hermanas” Gala Fundraiser.

Corina & Marisela "HomeGirls For the Arts” - Homegirls for the Arts is a Mission District collective that seeks to inspire the community to share their stories through creative arts.

Sharon Steuer - For more than three decades, artist and author Sharon has explored the merging of traditional and digital painting, drawing, printmaking and collage. Sharon’s artwork has appeared in many books and magazines, and has been exhibited widely. Her art has received the national Faber Birren Color Award, a Windsor Newton Painting award, and a Connecticut Commission on the Arts Fellowship Grant. Sharon’s painting studio is in San Francisco, though you may spot her secretly drawing portraits on public transit.

Homeyra Khosh - From Khosh's Instagram page: "I felt Yosemite's 1000+ year old giant Sequoias that survived last year's fire were a good fit, symbolizing Mission Housing clients and their struggles, strength and rich background." Mission Housing is an amazing organization in San Francisco. It currently serves some 3,000 residents in 1,600 units. 1,000 additional 100 percent affordable rental units are being developed.

CeCe Carpio - Using acrylic, ink, aerosol and installations, Cece Carpio tell stories of immigration, ancestry, resistance, and resilience. She documents evolving traditions through combining folkloric forms, bold portraits and natural elements with urban art techniques. Cece has produced and exhibited work in the Philippines, Fiji Islands, Cuba, Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Italy, Norway, Ireland, United Kingdom, India, Guam and throughout the United States.

Madeleine Tonzi - Oakland based artist, Madeleine Tonzi, is a painter and muralist. Her work is focused on capturing the essence of ephemeral moments, and is a reflection of her investigation into memory and place and the relationships we form with the various environments we experience.

Jarv Falkard - Jarv Falkard received a degree in design from UC Davis and worked as a commercial designer in the clothing and home furnishing industries for 35 years. At the same time she was a fine artist and art instructor teaching at the college level. She has shown her art throughout the United States and has been included in national and international watercolor competitions.

Katie Hass - Katie Haas is a painter based in Petaluma, California. Her work began at age five in San Francisco when her mother instructed her to draw a still life in attempt to keep her occupied. Her career as an artist has brought her through an honor’s degree at Art Center College of Design, through commercial illustration in Sonoma County while her three kids were young, through portraiture once they were older, and finally to her current series.

Bryana Fleming - A visionary mural artist, Bryana offers striking art to clients in the Bay Area, Ca. She works as a commissioned mural artist to give her clients a unique piece that will bring beauty to their location for years to come.You can find her work throughout the Bay Area, including at the Trader Joe’s in Emeryville, where she worked as the store artist. Bryana has completed dozens of murals so far, including a commission in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

All proceeds from the art auction will go toward Mission Housing’s Resident Services programs.

For tickets to “Las 3 Hermanas” — the Mission Housing 2019 Gala Fundraiser — click here.