Shizu Saldamando is an artist based out of L.A. She’s worked in many media including video and painting but she is most well known for her pen drawings. She grew up in the Mission District of San Francisco. Her mother is a Japanese-American community organizer and her father is a Mexican-American human rights lawyer. But just because she’s biracial does not mean that her life revolves around sushi and tacos.

She talks to us about her work and how capturing images of daily life can be political.

Shizu Saldamando was born and raised in San Francisco’s Mission district and received her B.A. from UCLA’s School of Arts and Architecture in 2000. In 2002 she attended ArtOmi International Artist Colony in upstate New York and in 2005 she received her MFA from California Institute of the Arts. She has exhibited her work in both painting and experimental media exhibitions including Los Angeles’, Freeways Festival of Experimental Media Arts, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, The Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago,The Phantom Sightings Exhibition at LACMA and the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. She has worked as general staff for such organizations as Center for the Study of Political Graphics, Self-Help Graphics & Art, and Slanguage Studio in Wilmington. She is one of the co-founders of artist run cooperative Monte Vista Projects and currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Artwork by Shizu Saldamando