About Us

Jesus Barraza is a 30-year-old Xicano poster artist from San Diego, CA who arrived in the Bay Area in 1994.  While at San Francisco State, Jesus began his career as a freelance graphic designer, working with progressive grassroots organizations throughout the Bay Area. In 1997, Jesus co-founded TEN12 – a techie collective of digital artists and web programmers whose primary focus is web design and political posters.
 
In 2001, Jesus became the lead graphic designer at the Mission Cultural Center for Latinos Arts (MCCLA), where he learned the art of screen printing at Mission Gráfica. While at MCCLA, Jesus maintained a steady output of self published political posters, drawing influences from masters such a, Juan R. Fuentes, Rene Castro, Jos Sances and Rupert Garcia. His mission as a printmaker is to help create a renaissance of the screen-printed political poster, and most importantly, to make it accessible to the people. After leaving MCCLA in 2003, Jesus became a designer and later a partner at Tumis, an East Oakland based design firm whose mission is to develop design solutions that fit progressive community based and non-profit organizations.
 
In the fall of 2003 Jesus co-founded Taller Tupac Amaru, a printing studio dedicated to creating political posters for the community. Since the opening of the studio, Jesus has printed over 50 posters for artists such as Malaquias Montoya, Emory Douglas, Favianna Rodriguez, Estria Miyashiro and Christine Wong.

melanie cervantes, a queer Xicana artist activist and cultural worker, is originally from Southern California and now lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area. melanie works as a Program Associate at the Oakland based Akonadi Foundation which issues grants to organizations that are working for racial justice. She is incredibly interested in role culture plays in movement building.

As an artist trained by library books, peers and experimentation melanie is concerned with making politicized art, art practice and culture accessible to people of color through her day time work in philanthropy. She has learned to balance her commitment to moving resources to just causes with her  art practice. melanie infuses her indigenous internationalist worldview, spirituality and politic into all her work. She believes in the democratization of art making and strives to share and teach everything she learns to others -particularly youth of color.  She works in several mediums including pen and ink, acrylic, printmaking, embroidery, fiber arts, stencils and spray paint. melanie earned her BA in Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley, focusing her studies on historical and contemporary Xicana/o art and art practice. She is passionately dedicated to working for social justice.