Lucia Gonzalez-Ippolito
Lucia Gonzalez-Ippolito is a Mission District fixture.
Her dad, a painter and welder, moved to San Francisco from Merida, Mexico. Her mom, an activist, came from Chicago and worked at China Books on 24th Street. They met in the mid-1980s and Lucia was born shortly after that. She was raised in the Mission mostly by her mother, always surrounded by her parents' activist and artist friends.
Lucia's mom sent her to a private high school up in Napa, which is where Lucia decided to dive into the world of art.
Oh, and there's a short tangent in Part 1 where we discuss the fabled and sadly extinct $3 burrito.
In Part 2, Lucia dives into her own personal art history, from always drawing as a kid and young adult to eventually attending college at the San Francisco Art Institute. Before that, while at City College, Lucia got her associates in child development and began teaching, something she continues to do to this day.
While at SFAI, she and some fellow students formed the SF Poster Syndicate, a group intended "to bring art and design to many different people’s movements in hopes that their message can be heard and seen more loudly."
The story of Lucia getting started painting murals intersects back with her activist mom and Balmy Alley in the Mission. She ends the podcast sharing the stories behind her first mural—"Mission Makeover," in Balmy Alley (seen above)—and "Women of the Resistance," which she collaborated with the SF Poster Syndicate on (seen below).
Photography by Michelle Kilfeather
