One of four 12x40 foot murals at the Oakland Coliseum’s main entrances. Painted with Daniel Galvez in 1994.
One of four 12x40 foot murals at the Oakland Coliseum’s main entrances.
Painted with Daniel Galvez in 1994.

Teamster artist Jos Sances enlivens public spaces

For Jos Sances, being an artist also means being a Teamster. After working as a screen printer for a nonprofit organization back in the 1980s, he decided that he loved the work but didn’t appreciate how he was treated as a worker. So in 1990, he helped found Alliance Graphics, a unionized screen printing and embroidery shop in Berkeley, and immediately had the new company affiliate with a union. Initially, the shop was affiliated with GCIU Local 583; the local has since merged with Teamsters Local 853.

“I wanted to stay in the non-profit world, but I wanted to be unionized and have a contract and union protections,” Sances says. The small shop has since grown to employ 14 people. “We have a stable workforce, which is unusual in this industry. It’s a good job with living wages and our people take pride in working here.”

Alliance Graphics does union and community screen printing and printmaking on a wide range of products, from union banners and t-shirts to specialty items, such as stickers, notebooks and pens. But setting them apart from the pack is that they only use vendors that are USA-based and unionized. “That gives us an edge. Most people don’t mind paying 25 cents more for an item if they know it’s not made with slave labor. We found a T-shirt manufacturer in Los Angeles that’s unionized. They’re a little more expensive, but they produce great shirts. We’re not the cheapest, that’s for sure, but we can still be competitive and provide really good service. People can come in with a scribble on a napkin and get back a beautiful product.”

Sances says that the shop is very green, having found ways to get rid of most chemicals and installing a filtering system so that printing refuse doesn’t go back into the bay or drain water. “Screen printing used to be hazardous,” he explains. “We’ve made it safe.”

Making art public


8’x 32’ Tile mural at Sixteenth Street BART Station, created with Daniel Galvez, 2002.
8’x 32’ Tile mural at Sixteenth Street BART Station, created
with Daniel Galvez, 2002.

Not only does Sances do screen printing and printmaking, he also has an impressive public art portfolio. “This is art that’s owned by everyone and is paid for with public funds,” he explains. As a result of an ordinance passed in the 1980s, all federal, state, and local projects include a small percentage for public art.

Sances had just made a 90-minute presentation for a high school campus project. “It’s a highly competitive process. 130 artists had applied and only five of us were invited to make presentations.”

In October, his three-section mural at the new Castro Valley Library was completed and unveiled to the public. “This was an interesting and tough project. Castro Valley had recently had a public art disaster and that project was mothballed, so they wanted to make sure, this time, that the community had an opportunity to talk with the artist and was invested in the project. In the end, a few thousand people came to the opening to see their art.”

The tile mural, entitled “The Free Form Flight of Life Long Learning,” celebrates the human imagination and the quest for information and ideas. As the “father of American libraries,” Benjamin Franklin is a central figure. He and the children on their magic carpet books fly over the landscape of Castro Valley. The style is a combination of realism and surrealism.

The challenge was that after a portion of the wall was installed, the project was put on hold until the flooring was installed. “Ordinarily, this would have been a time to panic, not knowing what state my project would be in when it was time to restart the job. But I got a lot of help when they found out I was a Teamster and the work was in perfect condition when I returned to the site. The electricians spent extra time and effort to light the mural really well. It was clear that I got support and respect for being a union member.”

One of his favorite works was at the Arnett Watson apartments. “The city named this 85-unit building for homeless families after a homeless activist who had died suddenly. I got to make a mural in the courtyard as a tribute to her. It wasn’t a big job or big money, but it was very fulfilling to be able to express my own politics as I’d like to.”

His next project is a 40 foot tall by 160 foot long Recreation Center wall at Ira Jenkins Park in East Oakland. This project will use epoxy paint on an aluminum sunscreen and is slated to take seven months to complete. “We’ll have to wear hazmat suits to apply the paint, but they claim it will last 50 years outside without fading,” Sances says. Again, creating this project has been a public process. “With the theme “healthy lifestyles,” we’ve held numerous meetings in East Oakland—in middle schools, senior centers, and libraries; we’ve taken pictures of kids and seniors to create a portrait of the community. This neighborhood has a reputation for drugs and crime, but we want to highlight the good healthy things that take place there as well.”

For this artist and Teamster, the Bay Area is his canvas. You can see Sances’ work at the Oakland Coliseum, the 16th Street BART station in San Francisco and the Amtrak BART transit village in Richmond, as well as at the San Francisco County Jail and the Alameda County Juvenile Justice Center.