Advisory Board

Christine Abiba

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Christine Abiba (they/she)'s is a queer, enby pinay born and raised in the Bay Area. Because of their experiences navigating care with elder family and community, Christine is interested in deepening our relationships across generations through collecting and archiving oral hxstories. Currently, Christine supports schools in sharing social emotional learning tools to K-5 students, while also teaching digital literacy skills to older adult learners. 

 

Christine is continuously enamored by the pirints included and honored throughout the 10 year QAP archive. They were a participant in the Queer Ancestors Project in the 2018-19 and 2019-2020 Cohorts.

Daniel Bao

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Daniel Bao is a queer man who was born in Argentina to Chinese parents (making him a different kind of ABC). He works as a nonprofit financial consultant with various Bay Area nonprofits including the GLBT Historical Society, Folsom Street Events, Lamplighters, Bridgegood, and Quinteto Latino. He received an MA in Latin American Studies from Stanford University in 1990 where he studied the history of Argentine sexual inversion from the late 19th to the early 20th centuries. A long-time lover of Queer History, he’s been involved with the GLBT Historical Society in a variety of roles since 1990. When not working or studying Queer History, he can be found playing the french horn with various bands and orchestras around the SF Bay Area.

Nathan Yergler

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Nathan is an artist and entrepreneur based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Beginning in 2011 Chrysalis Studio was his creative incubator as he explored print making in many forms and built his creative community. His experience telling his own queer story through printmaking helped heal early trauma, giving him a first-hand appreciation for the power of story-telling through art.

Anna Nguyen​

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Anna Nguyen (she/her) is a social worker and freelance artist based in San Francisco. She is a proud first-generation Chinese/Vietnamese American from Orange County, CA. Anna completed her BA in Psychology from UCLA and Masters in Social Welfare from UC Berkeley. She currently works as a government program analyst with a focus on early childhood in child welfare for the California Department of Social Services. She has also worked as a child welfare social worker and a child trauma and early childhood development researcher. Anna has created illustrations and comics for UC Berkeley, Mills College, Eastwind Books of Berkeley, Yale Child Study Center, and various publications. Anna’s passion for mental health advocacy, racial equity, and healthy childhood development is evidenced in her art. They were a part of the 2023 Queer Ancestors Project Resists cohort. 

Corey Brown

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Corey (he/him) is an out -&-proud transmasculine queer artist. As a mostly self-taught artist, Corey appreciates experimentation and creative problem-solving, the personal exploration that art allows, as well as the ways in which art can bridge cultures and languages to bring people and communities together. Upon moving to the Bay Area in 2010, he began to explore the queer arts scene and discovered linocut printmaking as part of the Queer Ancestors Project cohort in 2013. Since then, Corey's work has been featured in multiple shows, including his first solo exhibit in the SOMArts RAMP Gallery in 2015.

Debora Iyall

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Currently Debora Iyall is in her 14th year of teaching art at the secondary school level in Coachella Valley, CA. She received her Masters of Art in Art Teaching in June 2007. She has a Bachelors of Fine Arts degree in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute awarded in 1980.

 

She worked as an artist in residence from 2000-2007 across San Bernardino and Riverside County working through the Arts Council of San Bernardino. Her experience working with historically underserved community youth allowed her to be effective as an artist working in Boys and Girls Clubs, Community Day Schools, juvenile detention centers, after-school programs and many Title 1 schools across the two counties. 

 

From 1992 until 2000 she ran a printmaking program for sober Native Americans at SOMArts and inexpensive printmaking classes for the local South of Market community. 1977 until 2000 Debora was a resident of San Francisco and was on the board of both the Bay Area National Association of Recording Artists and the San Francisco Native American Cultural Center. 

 

Debora also represented the San Francisco 80’s alternative rock scene with her seminal band, Romeo Void, best known for the MTV, college radio and dance club hit “Nvr Say Nvr” with the provocative chorus line, “I might like you better if we slept together”. 

Pam Peniston

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Pamela Peniston is a Founding Board Member & recently retired (!!) Artistic Director of the Queer Cultural Center (QCC).  She provided leadership along with a brilliant staff, for Queer Cultural Center’s iconic program, the National Queer Arts Festival which commissioned generations of LGBTQI artists & artists of color and provided opportunities for them to discover their voices and connect with their communities.

 

Prior to Qcc, Pamela designed sets for National and Bay Area theatrical and dance companies.  She was nominated for an OBIE award for her design of EDEN for the Negro Ensemble Company in New York and received Critic’s Circle Awards for her designs of POPPIES and COCONUT for Theatre Rhinoceros here in San Francisco.

 

In a side trip into television in Chicago and Atlanta, she received gold medals from the Broadcast Design Association for her Art Direction at The Weather Channel.  Her early avocation of photography has become her main art form.

Maya Salcido White​

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Maya Salcido White (they/them) is a queer, mixed Xicanx artist from California and Texas. Maya works for a community-based organization in Oakland doing research and evaluation work in community spaces around violence prevention and re-entry services for formerly incarcerated individuals. Additionally, they teach art to elementary school students in San Francisco through a partnership with the art non-profit Root Division as part of the Latinx Teaching Artist Fellowship. Participating in the QAP workshop as part of the 2018-19 cohort was Maya's introduction to visual art and launched a passion for printmaking, which has grown into a drive to find more ways to make printmaking and other art forms accessible to artists of all ages.