Object Stories: San Francisco

Poet, Comedian, and Illustrator

Baruch Porras Hernandez is the author of the small poetry collections I Miss You, Delicate and Lovers of the Deep Fried Circle from Sibling Rivalry Press. His solo show won “Best Solo Comedy” at the New York City Fringe Festival in 2025. He is the creator of the online comic Tiny Baruch, and lives in San Francisco.

Multidisciplinary Artist

Christopher Martin is an Oakland-based multidisciplinary artist working across sculpture, installation, woodworking, sound, textiles, and written language. Rooted in the African Diaspora, his practice explores history, spirituality, and the stories held within materials and objects, including reclaimed wood, hand-built speakers, and listening environments. Martin was the first Artist-in-Residence at the Museum of the African Diaspora in 2018 and the inaugural artist at ICA San Francisco in 2022.

Multidisciplinary Artist

Victor De La Rosa is a Bay Area native whose studio practice combines computer-interfaced weaving and digital printing technologies with traditional hand-based textile techniques. He has exhibited internationally throughout North America, Asia, and Europe, including at the European Textile & Fibre Art Triennial in Riga, Latvia, where he received a jury prize, and has held residencies in Montreal and Oaxaca. His work has been featured in Surface Design Journal, Fiberarts, and American Craft, and he received his MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design as a President’s Scholar.

Artist, designer, former CEO of Artful Home and Guild Brands

Lisa is an artist, designer, and former business leader with a BFA from the California College of the Arts, and continues to practice art and design in the San Francisco Bay Area. She recently retired as CEO of Guild Brands and Artful Home, an e-commerce pioneer and one of the original online art galleries, where she represented more than 1,000 North American artists, designers, and craftspeople. Today, Lisa maintains a daily illustrated journal, paints, creates woven mixed-media works, serves as creative director for the Lisa Bayne clothing collection, and remains active with San Francisco’s Museum of Craft and Design, where she formerly served on the board.

Graphic designer, co-founder of SF Neon, co-producer of Neon Speaks

Randall is a San Francisco-based art director, photographer, and award-winning graphic designer whose passion for signage began as an apprentice sign painter in Flagstaff, Arizona. Along with her husband, Al Barna, she co-founded SF Neon, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving vintage neon and publishing books about historic signs. Randall is also the co-producer of Neon Speaks, an international neon symposium celebrating the history and future of neon, and dreams of designing neon signs for a living.

Studio artist, writer, Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation program officer

Rebekah is a San Francisco-based studio artist, independent writer, and arts administrator whose practice explores protection, vulnerability, and boundaries through steel sculpture and contemporary jewelry. With a background in blacksmithing, welding, and machining, she earned a BFA from Texas State University and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. In addition to her studio practice, Frank writes about materially focused artists, with a particular affinity for queer artists, and serves as a program officer at the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation.

Co-Chair of Heath Ceramics

Robin is Co-Chairman of Heath Ceramics, where he has spent more than two decades stewarding the company’s design, craft, and long-term business vision. In 2003, Robin and his partner Catherine Bailey purchased the ailing Saucelito pottery, founded in 1948, and built it into a sustainable, locally made business rooted in creativity, craftsmanship, and product integrity. A Stanford-trained product designer, Robin champions “Slow Business” — balancing profitability with positive community and environmental impact — and received a 2015 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in recognition of these efforts.

Artist, writer, KQED senior editor of arts and culture

Sarah Hotchkiss is a San Francisco-based artist, writer and senior editor of arts and culture at KQED. Her essays and reviews have appeared in publications including Art in America, The Creative Independent, SFMOMA’s Open Space, and Squarecylinder, and her writing has received awards from the Dorothea & Leo Rabkin Foundation and the Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California. She loves nothing more than a weekly trip to her local flea market in search of interesting objects.