Portfolio

Web­site for Polit­i­cal Gridlock.

“I’m try­ing to exist with­out sell­ing out. The inter­net is a plat­form for artists to show­case their art with­out a phys­i­cal gallery. This site is for the people.”

- Jon-Paul Bail

Jon-Paul Bail (aka Polit­i­cal Grid­lock), is a street artist and fine artist based in the Bay Area. Born and raised in Alame­da, CA. Jon-Paul Bail is the grand­son of 19th cen­tu­ry land­scape artist, Richard DeTre­ville, and has been mak­ing art since the age of 5. Since he was a child he has always known that he was meant to be an artist. Inspired by the 1980’s punk rock art scene and his Chi­cano screen-print­ing class taught by Malaquias Mon­toya, Jon-Paul com­bined the two aes­thet­ics to cre­ate a dis­course on social jus­tice top­ics and cur­rent world events.

Jon-Paul Bail attend­ed Cal­i­for­nia Col­lege of Arts and Crafts (CCAC) (1985–1990) and SF Art Insti­tute (1991) where he tru­ly honed in his eclec­tic and socio-polit­i­cal­ly intrigu­ing visu­al com­men­tary. In 1994, Bail brand­ed him­self as “Polit­i­cal Grid­lock” which pro­motes social aware­ness towards cur­rent local, nation­al and glob­al issues in a provoca­tive, out­spo­ken, fun­ny and some­times shock­ing spin on pop­u­lar cul­ture. His cur­rent ide­ol­o­gy is how cap­i­tal­ism “has seen the nat­ur­al world as a com­mod­i­ty resource while today sur­veil­lance cap­i­tal­ism sees resid­ual data as a resource,” where we are dis­armed through rad­i­cal indifference.

His work can be found on the streets of Oak­land, San Fran­cis­co, the greater Bay Area, and more. He has done print work for Win­ston Smith and Emory Dou­glas and has shown work in New York, San Fran­cis­co, Los Ange­les, and Rome, Italy. JP’s art is also in the col­lec­tions of the Legion of Hon­or, Oak­land Muse­um, Study of Polit­i­cal Graph­ics, and Yer­ba Bue­na Arts Cen­ter and has been pub­lished in 10+ polit­i­cal art books (Yo! What Hap­pened to Peace, Visions of Peace and Jus­tice, The Out­law Bible of Amer­i­can Art, All of Us or None, Spe­cial Deliv­ery, Repro­duce and Revolt, To Pro­tect & Serve/Proteger y Servir, and two edi­tions of Paper Politics).

Web Design­er, Devel­op­er, Admin — Jan­u­ary 2013 to Octo­ber 2017

• Devel­op, design, launch Word­Press web­site: gridlock.com
• Design graph­ic ele­ments using Adobe Photoshop
• Migrate old site from Net­work Solutions
• Update DNS registration
• Cre­ate online store using WooCommerce
• Pro­vide ongo­ing tech­ni­cal support

Web­site launch date: March 2013.