If you’ve ambled around the Mission District, chances are you have encountered the work of Lucía González Ippolito. The multi-talented artist brings current and historical events to life in vibrant murals and posters across this corner of the city. In colorful and detailed narratives, González Ippolito tells stories of local history, displacement, wealth inequality, and the impact of gentrification on multicultural neighborhoods.
As a screenprinter, González Ippolito is co-founder of San Francisco Poster Syndicate, a collective of students and artists who produce political posters for protests and community events. On some of the many branches of her creative tree bloom intimate paintings on canvas, colored pencil drawings, and a comic book consisting of 400 stories that is currently in the works.
González Ippolito created her first mural, Mission Makeover, in collaboration with her father Tirso Araiza in the Mission’s Balmy Alley between 24th and 25th Streets. The work is a response to changing conditions for Latinx and other residents of color in the district. It was important for González Ippolito to document these changes in order to inform the new demographic moving into the neighborhood of its history and distinctive voice. In fact, her work is inspired by this region’s backstory and the artists and storytellers who came before her.
“I was mentored by many Bay Area legends who continue to inspire me such as my father and artists Jos Sances, Rene Yañez, Juana Alicia Araiza, and Susan Cervantes. Other influences include Edith Boone, Irene Perez, Esther Hernandez, Juan Fuentes, Art Hazelwood, Calixto Robles, Ray Patlan, Dewy Crumpler, and of course ‘Los Tres Grandes’—Orozco, Siqueiros, y Rivera,” González Ippolito told 48hills.
In 2018, González Ippolito painted the 38 depictions across three tiers in the mural, Women of the Resistance, also in Balmy Alley, as a tribute to female revolutionaries past and present. By using the context to present women, some known and others much less so, González Ippolito aims to educate viewers and elevate the role of activism in our communities. Figures commingle with feminine power symbology to underline the importance of women as influencers and changemakers in a patriarchal system.
González Ippolito was born and raised in the heart of the Mission District and has lived in San Francisco her whole life. Her father migrated from Mexico in the 1980s and her mother came to the Bay Area from Chicago for work in the mid-’70s. González Ippolito received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2016 and will complete her MFA at San Francisco State University in 2025.
“I love the vibrancy of my Latino neighborhood and the freedom of expression within our culture, including my ability to publicly create so much political art. I also feel very privileged to continue to be able to live here when so many cannot afford it and have had to move,” González Ippolito said.
On the northeast corner of 24th and Capp Streets, González Ippolito’s mural Alto al Fuego en La Misión (Ceasefire in the Mission), facilitated by Justice4Amilcar Coalition and Homies Organizing the Mission to Empower Youth (HOMEY), looms large. The mural, which González Ippolito completed in collaboration with a group of artists in 2019, is in memory of victims of immigration violence, with a specific portrait of Amilcar Perez-Lopez, who was shot to death by police on Folsom Street in 2015.
“Those who are oppressed by brutal structures of power such as capitalism, neo-liberalism, white supremacy, systemic racism, and settler colonialism, are my subjects. I don’t believe that in our current times art serves any purpose if it is not political. I strongly believe that it is our duty as artists to speak out against injustice and stand up for those who do not have the same platform that we do,” González Ippolito said.
A student at SFSU for one more year, González Ippolito works from a studio provided by the university’s graduate studies program. Whether she’s taking on mural projects and commissions, vending her art on weekends, or hosting her own pop-ups to raise money, creative multitasking is a constant for the artist. As a teacher at various schools and community centers, event organizer, and mother, the artist says she finds it challenging to maintain an uninterrupted workflow for her studies.
“I used to be able to spend hours zoning out on a piece and staring at the same areas of paint, playing music and dancing while I worked. But nowadays, I am pregnant and have a three-year-old with a lot of needs. I have to ‘get in where I fit in,’ so to speak,” she said.
That “fit in” for González Ippolito usually means she has just one or two days a week where she puts in a solid four to five hours of painting without distractions. The rest of the week, she splashes paint on canvas in between classes, before work, or when someone can watch her daughter for a couple of hours.
“I consider being the mother of a toddler to be my second full-time job, which requires any last ounce of energy I have in the day. My daughter is my greatest masterpiece of all time and deserves a lot of love and attention in order to be her best self,” she said.
González Ippolito says she was even more of a storyteller as a child. She enjoyed making cartoons and writing about the lives of different characters she created from imagination. As she grew up, she was educated primarily by her mother about the importance of global struggles and the histories of oppressed people, a direct influence on her work today.
“I learned about many different political artists and the impact their work had in educating and inspiring change. It has been my commitment to focus mainly on standing up against injustices within my work and I’ve mostly stayed inside the realm of muralism, painting, and screen-printing within my career to achieve that,” González Ippolito said.
She adds that she feels that she came full circle when she decided to begin a recent project about life in the Mission District, that harkens back to her childhood penchant for storytelling. The project titled, Heart Portals, will consist of 10 paintings, each one depicting a loving relationship of mother and child, homegirls, couples, business owners, and street vendors, all to highlight the cultural backgrounds of the Mission and the community’s diverse range of stories. The artist hopes to complete the project this year.
In 2014, González Ippolito took part in a delegation to Palestine and installed a tiled mural in a refugee camp. She says it changed how she viewed the imperative of artist as activist, further forging a commitment to being a voice for change through her art.
“Dheisheh refugee camp in the West Bank near Bethlehem was established as a temporary sanctuary for the nearly 4,000 Palestinians from 45 villages west of Jerusalem and Hebron who were ethnically cleansed from their homes in 1948 during the first Nakba (violent displacement and dispossession of land). In partnership with the Shoruq community center and the Middle East Children’s Alliance, artist Jos Sances and I led a screenprinting workshop and installed the mural at the center. We met some of the most amazing and resilient people I’ve ever encountered. They taught me more than I taught them, gave me new ways of looking at the world, from faith to gratitude to life after death to being humble to laughing in the most difficult of times,” she said.
Since her visit, González Ippolito says she remains committed to creating more work about Palestine, including her oil painting, Protect the Sacred, and screenprint Fergustine, which contrasts the violence in Palestine and Ferguson, Missouri. She speaks of the continuance of a war waging without foreseen resolution and how she views conditions in the region of the Middle East currently.
“With the West Bank under attack, Israel knows the world is focused on Gaza and they can brutalize Palestinians in other areas with zero coverage from Western media. Families are being forcibly removed from their homes by settlers, women harassed and attacked in the streets, young men gunned down by soldiers, children ripped from their mothers’ arms and kidnapped, as well as thrown into Israeli prisons. This was never about Hamas, it’s about land and oil in the name of religion. They want to wipe out all Palestinians from Gaza, the West Bank, and Golan Heights,” she said.
González Ippolito’s work also reaches into other corners of the human experience and shared emotional alliance. In early 2024, she began working on a variety of paintings for an event she is involved with every February called Lovers Lane. In the Valentine’s-themed event—this year happening Saturday, February 8—that she hosts in Balmy Alley, González Ippolito presents a day that she says is more about love for community and love as an act of resistance, rather than a Hallmark holiday. Though event organizing and social outreach is another art practice for González Ippolito that she engages in frequently, this year she says she will finally take some of the weight off her own shoulders, having rallied a team of friends to help out with the organizing.
“It’s a really amazing event and a gathering of all walks of life from Latinx people in the Mission, to newcomers who are visiting, to families and youth. There are all types of local POC artists, merchants, and upcoming entrepreneurs vending their crafts. Young and local DJs and performers sing, dance, recite poetry and do stand-up comedy. There are kids’ activities, health and wellness areas, and couples’ games,” she said.
The paintings she has been working on for Lovers Lane are connected to her Heart Portals series and González Ippolito plans to have them on full display for the event coming up in February 2025 and/or in 2026.
González Ippolito will be part of the Autonomous Zones exhibition, the final MFA show at San Francisco State University Fine Arts Gallery taking place on April 25. What we will see from this outspoken, thought-provoking, and dedicated artist after she completes her studies will surely be a feast, not just for our eyes, but for our hearts and minds as well. She urges us through her artwork to take notice, to never cease speaking out about ethnic persecutions taking place around the world.
“Beyond Palestine, like the Congo and Sudan, genocides are perpetuated by the United States. We are complicit in these wars as tax-paying citizens of a neocolonialist capitalist war-mongering country and need to continue to demand and fight for revolutionary change until all people are free,” González Ippolito said.
No matter what she sets her focus on going forward, artist Lucía González Ippolito will continue to remind us how integral the creation of art is in keeping the wheels of social justice turning. She will raise consciousness by challenging our perceptions of the world through brilliant visual messaging and encourage deeper engagement with our communities both near and far.
“I hope people will investigate the imagery in my work and that it will provoke critical thinking and important questions,” González Ippolito said. “I hope it not only educates people but also inspires revolutionary change.”
For more information, visit her website at cialuart.com and her Instagram.
