How Joel Hernandez’s Sculptures Capture SF’s Spirit

Conchas, avocados, burritos, and beer, all with a curious mustachioed face peeking out, greet visitors to artist Joel Hernadez’s online shop. A San Francisco artist, Hernandez is a master of papier-mâché sculpture who has found acceptance and inspiration from The City. His upcoming show, which opens November 1 at Mag Galleries in the Castro, will reflect that. 

Hernandez’s bio explains that his masks reflect his identities: “I had to wear several masks growing up, whether it was trying to act more Mexican or American, or even hiding the fact that I was gay.” As a child in Mexico, he remembers making piñatas and easter egg decorations out of papier-mâché. “We were not well-to-do in Mexico so my mom would make it a fun activity for us to do,” he says. 

Joel Hernandez’s Backstory

When Hernandez moved to Texas, he began collecting vintage wooden masks. “They’re vintage, they’re old, they’re still used for some rituals and pageantry but it’s more for a cultural showcase. It made me think we don’t make masks for modern times to signify what’s going on now.” That’s when he decided to revisit the art form from his childhood. 

Hernandez has now lived in California for seven years, San Francisco for five of those. He shares, “As a gay man, there’s just something about the welcoming nature of Californians and how my sexuality, my marriage is not anything that anyone even.. It’s just normal here.” Hernandez describes growing up without any gay representation and how repressive it felt. 

Now, he references love whenever he can. One of his recent works shows two parrot masks with people inside. Although they’re both mustachioed men, what stands out is the look of love in their expressions. Herandez explains, “I want the viewer to see that. I don’t want them to see two men falling in love, I want them to see love.” He says it’s important to have these couples on the wall, especially with recent laws springing up around the country like the Don’t Say Gay bill. 

Much of Hernandez’s body of work is inspired by his personal life. “I love going for walks with my husband. We just love walking around and seeing these treasure troves around the city. I may never be able to afford a Victorian home but being outside of it, seeing the facade, the history, seeing the old footage of the same street looking exactly the same feels like walking around in a museum.” 

Inspiration

Not only does Hernandez incorporate parrots and Victorians; his upcoming show is all about riding the bus. He says, “It’s like you’re riding the veins of the city, going off to different organs… I’m off to the liver, the heart, the brain.” When he sits on the bus, he is able to imagine all the different rich interior lives of other passengers. 

The upcoming Mag Galleries show is called Alone Together in a Crowd. He says, “It’s about the way that you feel when you’re sitting on a bus. You don’t know anyone in here but you know you’re not alone. You’re in this parade around the city and you’re coming up with ideas of what could be happening in their lives…” 

The artwork conjures memories of Hernandez’s Mexican uncles, but also of “being told what a man is.” When he was growing up, he was told that men have to have mustaches. “In a way I’m using that face of the thing I was told of how I should be. I should be a masculine man. And then I grab that face and put it inside of a teddy bear, inside of a parrot, putting them in situations where I may look like this but you don’t know what’s going on inside.” 

Hernandez also references The City’s many street festivals through what he calls his Party Animals series. It’s fun art with a serious lesson; many of his personal collection of vintage masks, which he describes as sacred, have similar themes. “They’re sacred. I love having them because they remind me of the power of mask telling and how they were used to signify what was happening at the time.”

Scary Subjects

One of the artist’s next projects focuses on his interpretation of AI. He’s painting these metallic silver. He says, “I’m trying to make them look scary because to me that’s something that we should all be scared about. The future that we don’t know where this is heading.” 

He models it off some of the Mexican Devil Masks in his collection: “They were meant to scare someone. They were meant to warn people that this is something that could happen to you. This devil could come after you for not being who you’re supposed to be. I’m creating the same concept, but with more modern takes.”

Not only are Hernadez’ pieces referential to themes from his childhood and love notes to San Francisco; they’re also made for people like him who rent. Since not everyone has big walls, he says, “I try to add as much detail and color as possible because I want to give them my best.” Many of his pieces are, like their Mexican folk art inspiration, vibrant and highly detailed.

Hernandez thinks there was a big reckoning after the pandemic where apartment dwellers realized their walls were a bit bleak. He says, “As a person who lives in a small apartment, I think about people around my age who are struggling to buy a house and to have the same kind of lives that other generations enjoyed. I try to make art as fun as possible for apartments because I try to make art for people like me.”

Alone Together in a Crowd, a solo show by Joel Hernandez, opens on November 1 at 5pm at Mags Galleries and runs through December.