Internationally celebrated artist Jos Sances of Berkeley at work in his screen-printing studio. Sances will be teaching a series of five workshops sponsored by the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program. Photo courtesy of Kathy Keatley Garvey

DAVIS, CA (MPG) – The UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program is sponsoring a series of five hands-on screen-printing workshops taught by celebrated artist, muralist, printmaker and activist Jos Sances of Berkeley.

Sances, an internationally renowned artist, will teach the screen-printing workshops from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Feb. 28, March 1, March 7-8 and March 15 in the Labudio, located in Rooms 126-142 of the Environmental Horticulture Building, UC Davis campus. (The word, "Labudio," is coined from laboratory and studio.)

The fee for the entire series is $200, with all materials provided, said UC Davis Distinguished Professor Emerita Diane Ullman, director emerita of the Art/Science Fusion Program.

Participants will leave with the ability to create art and print it independently, Ullman said.

Participants will learn to create and prepare images for screenprinting (drawings, paintings, photographs and scratchboards); prepare screens, clean screens and burn images; print on paper, fabric and clay; print in multiple colors; and use diverse inks and emulsions.

To register or to learn more information, contact Professor Ullman at [email protected].

Sances maintains a website, "The Art of Jos Sances," at https://www.josart.net/. His art can be found in numerous public museum collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Birmingham Museum of Art, American Labor Museum (Haledon, N.J.), Oakland Museum of California and Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, among others. 

Born John Joseph Sances in Boston in 1952 to Sicilian parents, Jos studied at Montserrat School of Visual Arts (now Montserrat College of Art), Beverly, Mass. In 1976, he moved to California, where he became active in art and politics. In 1980, he co-founded Mission Grafica, the printmaking studio at the Mission Cultural Center, San Francisco, where he worked until 1988. 

Sances is the founder (1989) and director of Alliance Graphics, a Berkeley-based unionized screenprint shop serving the artistic and activist communities. He is also a founding member of the Great Tortilla Conspiracy, "a satirical performance collective that screenprints images – often political and irreverent – onto tortillas using chocolate, creating edible works of art that blur the boundaries between performance, humor and activism," according to the Warnock Fine Arts website.

"In 2010 and 2016, the Library of Congress acquired nearly 500 of his prints, creating a significant record of his career output," relates Warnock Fine Arts.

"His work has been exhibited widely, including in “Committed to Print” at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, at La Sorbonne in Paris (2022), and in “¡Printing the Revolution!: The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics 1965 to Now” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, where Sances was one of the few non-Chicano artists featured. 

He has completed murals at the Oakland Coliseum, tile installations at BART and AMTRAK stations and collaborative projects with Art Hazelwood at the Castro Valley Library and San Francisco’s Arnett Watson Apartments. His international projects include tile mural workshops in Todos Santos, Mexico and Dheisheh Refugee Camp in Palestine.

Sances created the monumental scratchboard masterpiece “Or, The Whale,” which was displayed in the 2019 exhibition “Here Is the Sea” at the Richmond Art Center. The sperm whale drawing, depicted in 119 panels, measures 51 inches long by 14 feet wide and details the history and cost of American capitalism. “Or, The Whale” is now on view at the Mystic Seaport Museum in Stonington, Conn., through Jan. 21, 2027.

Ullman, an internationally recognized entomologist, professor and artist, co-founded the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program with artist Donna Billick in 1997 and both co-directed the program. Since then, it has been “a hot bed of innovation, bridging art and science with diverse undergraduate courses, exhibitions, performances and colloquia with collaboration among design faculty, science faculty, museum educators, professors, artists and UC Davis students,” Ullman said. 

The program's large scale, ceramic-mosaic projects range from "Nature's Gallery" (wall sculpture of plants and insects) in the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden, to "A Bird's Eye View" (raptors and the insects they eat) on an outer wall of the visitors' center at the California Raptor Center on Old Davis Road, UC Davis campus.

Today, as the director emerita of the UC Davis Art/Science Fusion Program, Ullman works closely with her colleague, urban landscape entomologist Emily Meineke, assistant professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and the new director of the Art/Science Fusion Program. Meineke is leading a ceramic-mosaic mural project by the Arboretum plant nursery.