Jos Sances - prints and biography
Printmaker, Muralist, and Community Activist Shaping the Cultural Landscape of the Bay Area
Medium: 18 color Screenprint
Year: 2026
Image Size: 35 × 23 inches
Edition of 18
A dynamic coastal scene in which a pod of dolphins breaks the surface of churning water beneath a glowing sky, while an industrial tanker looms along the horizon below. The composition is divided into distinct horizontal registers, juxtaposing the vitality of marine life with the rigid geometry of human infrastructure.
Medium: 8 color Screenprint
Year: 2023
Image Size: 32 × 16 inches
Edition of 18
Pangas Launch from Punta Lobos by Jos Sances is a vivid contemporary woodcut that captures the tension between traditional labor and modern encroachment. Fishermen in bright yellow slickers push their pangas into the surf at dawn, the sea rendered in intricate cross-hatching beneath a rose-lavender sky. In the distance, the pristine coastline gives way to looming high-rises under construction — a commentary on environmental change and cultural resilience along Mexico’s Baja peninsula. The meticulous detail and layered narrative reflect Sances’s characteristic blend of social observation, technical mastery, and human empathy.
Medium: 8 color Screenprint
Year: 2015
Image Size: 36 × 18 inches
Edition of 11
Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways by Jos Sances revisits the brutal realities of nineteenth-century whaling through the lens of contemporary critique. The hand-colored woodcut is divided into two panels: above, a crew of sailors flenses a whale amid the grim choreography of industrial labor; below, a majestic ship heaves on a turbulent sea, its rigging and flags rendered with extraordinary precision. Sances transforms the historical imagery of whaling into a meditation on capitalism, conquest, and ecological exploitation—its title echoing the divided loyalties of those who both serve and resist empire. The artist’s intricate linework and layered symbolism reveal his ongoing dialogue between human industry and the natural world.
Medium: Screenprint done at KALA Art Institute
Year: 2019
Image Size: 18 x 28 inches
Edition of 25
A vast sperm whale drifts below the surface, scarred by harpoons, while above floats a lone survivor on a coffin raft—a haunting meditation on survival, myth, and the immensity of the sea. Screen print from Jos Sances’s series inspired by Moby-Dick.
Medium: Screenprint
Year: 2022
Image Size: 20 x 15 inches
Image Size: 24 x 18 inches
Edition of 18
Jos Sances' screenprint "Rachel" serves as a poignant tribute to the themes explored in Herman Melville's Moby Dick. The artwork depicts the whaling ship Rachel, a vessel steeped in the narrative of the novel, known for its tragic role in the quest for the elusive white whale. Sances captures the essence of the ship amidst a tumultuous sea, with intricate details that evoke the peril and beauty of maritime life. The haunting figure emerging from the depths adds a layer of emotional depth, symbolizing loss and the relentless search for what has been lost—a central motif in Melville's work.
The print resonates with Ishmael's reflections on fate and the human condition, as the ship Rachel becomes a metaphor for the fragility of life and the consequences of obsession. Sances' stylistic choices, including the swirling patterns in the background and the dramatic interplay of light and shadow, mirror the chaotic journey of Ahab and his crew. Through "Rachel," viewers are invited to contemplate the broader themes of sacrifice, revenge, and the quest for understanding in an indifferent universe, firmly rooting the artwork in the rich literary tradition of Moby Dick.
Medium: Screenprint
Year: 2024
Image Size: 36 x 18 inches
Edition of 10
Humpbacks depicts the environmental plight of marine life, depicting a massive humpback whale and its calf swimming through an ocean littered with a plastic bag. The whale’s eye, gazes directly at the floating trash—a bag with a cartoonish fish design and the words "THANK YOU" ironically printed on it—highlights the ocean’s growing plastic crisis, with over 8 million tons entering annually, threatening species like humpbacks.
By: Jos Sances
Medium: Screenprint
Year: 2023
Image Size: 20 x 15 inches
Paper Size: 24 x 18 inches
Edition of 20
Screen print portraying Herman Melville, based on Asa Twitchell’s portrait. Behind Melville rises the Bay of Naples, echoing the author’s travels, while below, a dramatic whaling scene unfolds with the ship Acushnet and boats confronting a great whale—an homage to Moby-Dick. Commissioned for The Melville Society Cultural Project at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2024.
By: Jos Sances
Medium: Screenprint
Year: 2023
Image Size: 20 x 15 inches
Paper Size: 24 x 18 inches
Edition of 18
Screen print depicting Frederick Douglass, the great abolitionist and orator. Surrounding his portrait is imagery of a schoolhouse and Black children, symbolizing Douglass’s lifelong advocacy for education, freedom, and equality. This is part of Jos Sances’s series honoring transformative American figures.
Medium: Screenprint
Year: 2021
Image Size: 22 x 22 inches
Edition of 25
Jos Sances print Dia de los Muertos, November 2 is a densely layered allegory reflecting on the long shadow of European discovery and its ongoing consequences. Rendered with Sances trademark blend of satire, history, and social commentary, the print centers on animated skeleton figures standing in for colonial powers and entangled with symbols of greed, extraction, religious fundamentalism, ecological ruin, and distorted systems of justice. Bees swarm chaotically, a turtle bears impossible weight, flames rise beneath a figure labeled Greed, and a skeletal bird attempts to balance a scale that can no longer hold equilibrium.
Medium: Screenprint
Year: 2022
Image Size: 20 x 15 inches
Image Size: 24 x 18 inches
Edition of 18
In Perth, Jos Sances captures a dramatic and symbolic scene drawn from Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, depicting the ship’s blacksmith Perth forging a harpoon under the watchful eye of a fierce and stormy sea. Around him, storm-petrels—referred to by sailors as “Mother Carey’s chickens”—swirl ominously through the air, evoking ancient superstitions and maritime lore. At the heart of the composition, a white-hot flame rises from the forge, illuminating the harpoon—an instrument of vengeance that reflects Captain Ahab’s burning obsession.
Ahab’s own words are etched into the lower left of the print:
“Are these thy Mother Carey’s chickens, Perth? always flying in thy wake; birds of good omen, too, but Not to All;—look here, they burn; but thou liv’st among them without a scorch.”
This passage underscores the fatalism and intensity that pervade Melville’s narrative and is masterfully rendered by Sances in this stark, expressive composition.
Medium: Screenprint
Year: 2022
Image Size: 20 x 15 inches
sheet Size: 24 x 18 inches
Edition of 18
In this compelling portrait titled Ahab, Sances channels the psychological intensity of Herman Melville’s iconic anti-hero from Moby-Dick. The print presents a brooding, weatherworn Captain Ahab standing firmly on the deck of the Pequod. With his wooden leg planted defiantly and his heavy coat billowing in the wind, Ahab radiates an aura of obsession and menace. His solitary form dominates the foreground, while ghostlike figures of sailors—etched faintly into the sky—suggest the many lives swept up in his vengeful pursuit.
Accompanying the image is a quote from Ishmael, Melville’s narrator:
“Ahab’s quenchless feud seemed mine. With greedy ears I learned the history of that murderous monster against whom all others had taken our oaths of violence and revenge.”
This excerpt underscores the deep psychological entanglement between leader and crew, and between man and myth.
Medium: Screenprint
Year: 2022
Image Size: 15 x 20 inches
Sheet Size: 18 x 24 inches
Edition of 18
In Pequod, artist Jos Sances offers a visually powerful interpretation of a climactic moment from Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. Rendered with meticulous detail, the scene depicts the doomed whaling ship Pequod sailing into a stormy harbor beneath a brooding sky. A giant, ominous bird of prey looms over the ship, silhouetted against a glowing full moon—within which we glimpse the skeletal figure of death. A beacon from a lighthouse futilely cuts through the darkness, illuminating the ship’s path toward destruction.
Quoting directly from Melville's text, the print includes the line:
“…then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander’s soul.”
This haunting passage underscores the print’s emotional gravity and its literary source, capturing Ahab's madness and the ship's doomed fate in visual form.
Medium: 7 color Screenprint
Year: 2023
Image Size: 20.75 x 14.5 inches
Edition of 12
The abandoned cannery at one end of the beach at Punta Lobos dates from the period 1960-80. Over-exploitation led to a collapse in the green turtle population, but it is now used by conservation group for releasing turtles to repopulate the area. The lower part of the image shows turtles now laying eggs there again.
Medium: 8 color Screenprint
Year: 2023
Image Size: 20.75 x 14.5 inches
Edition of 12
Over-exploitation led to a collapse in the green turtle population in the area, but it is now used by conservation group for releasing turtles to repopulate the area. However, natural predators still pose a challenge.
Medium: 20 color screenprint done at KALA Art Institute
Year: 2023
Image Size: 44 x 60 inches
Edition of 12
The Great Egret has been said to symbolize new beginnings, peace, grace and partnership. Here, we see the Egret against a blue sky, with the image superimposed over innumerable human faces. The number 8,056,560,887 was the world's population on the day the print was completed.
Jos Sances
Biography
Jos Sances (b. Boston, Massachusetts) is a printmaker, muralist, and community activist who has spent more than four decades shaping the cultural landscape of the San Francisco Bay Area. Educated at Montserrat School of Visual Art in Beverly, Massachusetts, Sances moved west and quickly became a central figure in community-based printmaking. In 1980, he co-founded Mission Grafica, the printmaking studio at the Mission Cultural Center in San Francisco, where he worked until 1988. In 1989, he established Alliance Graphics, a unionized screenprint shop that continues to serve both artistic and activist communities.
Sances’s work is known for its combination of technical mastery and biting social commentary. He is also a founding and lifelong 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.
Over the years, his prints and murals have earned both critical and institutional recognition. In 2010 and 2016, the Library of Congress acquired nearly 500 of his prints, creating a significant record of his career output. 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.
Public art remains at the heart of Sances’s practice. 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.
Through his lifelong dedication to socially engaged art, Jos Sances has redefined the possibilities of printmaking and muralism as tools for activism, community, and cross-cultural dialogue.
Read more about the Vision Behind "Or, The Whale" (Part One)
Read more about Themes & Iconography in the Art of Jos Sances
Related artists addressing social justice:
Juan Fuentes
Artemio Rodríguez
Art Hazelwood
Protest In Art (theme page)
By: Jos Sances
Medium: 14 color reduction screenprint
Year: 2026
Image Size: 12 × 12 inches
Edition of 25