Misstencil
Photo by Alfredo Becerra
Misstencil was born on a mountain in China.
In this episode, we meet artist Misstencil and she shares the story of her life. Before we get to that, be sure to RSVP to our Keep It Local show on May 23. Misstencil will be one of the six artists featured that evening, and for a very good reason. But we’ll get to that.
As the Communist Party came to power in China, her dad and his family found themselves on the unfortunate side of things. His side of the family had a history as successful business people, which was suddenly frowned upon. Her mom came from a family of professors, also not favorable in the “new China.” Her dad was from Hunan Province, where her mom’s family later moved.
When her dad was young, his family gave him up to a foster mother and foster sister. That foster family, capitalists like her dad’s family, was ostracized and became homeless. Misstencil’s dad was smart and talented, but because of his family’s background, was denied the opportunity to go to college.
He also had tough luck with women. When it came time to meet their parents, once it became obvious what his family’s political background was, they would end the relationship. This happened on more than one occasion.
Despite being attractive and talented (at art and engineering), he was still single at 30. Then someone introduced him to the woman who would become Misstencil’s mom. On their first date, he wasted no time letting her know his background. And it landed. She told him about her own background, and said she wanted to give him a chance.
After the two got married, the government sent them to work hard jobs in the mountains. The reality of life there meant that children went to day care while the parents worked. And after work, those adults had to attend political meetings. There was little to no time to raise kids. This was the situation in which Misstencil would grow up.
Because of this, her parents sent Misstencil to live with her mom’s parents when she was eight months old. She saw her parents only once a year until she was around 12.
Growing up with her grandparents was traumatizing for Misstencil, despite how good they were to her. And that led to depression. All the kids around her had parents, but she effectively did not. It also affected her performance in school. She didn’t do well in any subject except art. Her depression made it hard for her to be interested or to take school seriously.
Misstencil’s parents took her out of school eventually, out of fear that they would lose her, and were able to get her into an education program that was not goal-oriented. In that time, she started to change, which she attributes to the lack of pressure. “I no longer had this pressure of doing stuff I don’t like to do,” she says.
When she graduated, that school sent Misstencil and one other young woman to Shanghai for college. She says that it was an especially optimistic time in China, and she embraced her time in the country’s largest city.
Misstencil shares a fun sidebar about the first time she saw and went into a McDonald’s. Because she was totally unfamiliar with the menu, she ended up ordering a bunch of desserts.
Then she tells us about seeing an advertisement for a meeting about a school in Switzerland. More importantly, cookies would be served at this meeting. That was enough for young Misstencil.
Like many people in China, she was familiar with Switzerland and its amazing mountain scenery. Calendars depicting the Swiss Alps were common. But Misstencil never imagined that she’d have the opportunity to go there.
As we’ve mentioned, the Chinese government exploited people like her dad. He was never really compensated for the incredible contributions he gave to his society. But then he found himself with a little bit of money, and told his daughter that they could use it to send her to Europe for school, at least for a year. She jumped on that chance to get out of her home country.
Misstencil shares the detailed story of her journey to Switzerland. It involves large amounts of paper currency, some of which ended up in her shoes. Arriving was tricky, too. It was the middle of the night and there was a train to catch. And she needed to go to the bathroom, but didn’t have the coins needed to do that.
A further complication was that she didn’t speak the language (German or French). A friendly fellow train passenger offered help finding her stop. But then he fell asleep. Eventually, she made it … in the middle of the night. There was no one around. So she walked.
When she arrived at her new school, she was told that because school started the next day, she’d have to pay to stay there that night (which was already half over). Misstencil notes the contrast between this and what she was used to at home. She says she wondered if she had made a mistake.
But she paid, and the next morning after she woke up, she opened her window. It was like being inside of a calendar, she says.
In Part 2, we pick up where we left off in Part 1, with Misstencil at a new school half a world away from her home in China.
Her time in Switzerland started off in business school, a topic that she admits she’s not the best at today. Aside from school, she visited other parts of Europe. She got a job in Switzerland, but called her family back home as much as she could afford to. One call she had with them around the new year one year had her feeling like family members were passing the phone and no one wanted to talk with her. She then learned that her grandfather, the one who had raised her, had passed away days before this call. The family had kept the news of his illness from Misstencil, ostensibly to protect her.
Her grandfather’s death took her about a decade to get over. She was left with a sense of aimlessness and lack of purpose. Going back home felt out of the question, and she liked Switzerland. But her school there had a joint program with a school in the US, and so she applied for a visa. That school was in South Carolina.
When her time in South Carolina came to an end, she had a choice—New York or San Francisco. She (correctly) chose The City.
Misstencil had friends in SF already, and they let her stay with her. Those friends told her about a website, then only in the Bay Area, that she could use to find her own place. That site was Craigslist, and they were right. She soon found a place of her own. The year was 2000, and little did she know that she was beginning what would be a decades-long stay here.
Her first job in The City was for a big company, one that had a dress code that put her in high heels. Looking back, Misstencil is so far removed from that corporate world that she cannot imagine wearing those shoes, or painting her nails, or other things that go along with corporate culture. But we’ll get to that.
She found herself meeting and befriending older hippies who encouraged her to pursue her art. She was broke, and they put her up. They helped her get art supplies. She had previously set aside any artistic ambitions while going to school and beginning what she thought would be a career. But summoning inspiration from the art her dad used to do and accepting the help of her friends in her new city, she decided to go for it.
Misstencil (not known by that name just yet) began to show her art. She recounts the first time she sold a piece, and how that felt. She walked by the gallery and saw that red dot and knew she had to tell everybody about it. She says that art and San Francisco and those early friends she made here saved her.
Looking back on her life and the emotional struggles she had endured, Misstencil came to realize that, as an adult and survivor of depression, she wanted to help kids going through that. She lived with roommates in a rent-controlled spot, thus allowing her to do side work of that nature.
The person who today is Misstencil of course wasn’t always known by that name. That started in 2022. She shares the origin story of her pseudonym.
It all began with her simply wanting to beautify parts of The City that had lost their luster, so to speak—boarded-up storefronts and the like. She found herself all over town, talking to people, hearing their stories, hearing how much neighborhoods meant to people. This led Misstencil to conceive of her “San Francisco Lonely Hearts” project, which is how my life intersected with hers. It’s a way for her to show her deep love for and appreciation of San Francisco.
She shares how she settled on stencil art for her method lately. She never had any formal training or went to art school. She says that because she didn’t have a very happy childhood, she wanted her art to help her feel like a kid again.
Misstencil goes on a side story about the time she connected with SF icon Frank Chu and invited him to do Bay to Breakers with her. We also talk about the day we met, when she showed her SF Lonely Hearts work-in-progress canvas outside of Vesuvio. In addition to the 2D art that day in Jack Kerouac Alley, she had Frank Chu on a Roomba holding his infamous “12 Galaxies” sign, and a Golden Gate Bridge bench placed in front of the canvas.
Before we wrap, I ask Misstencil about upcoming shows she has, and she humors me by plugging our “Keep It Local” show, which she’s in.
We end the episode with Misstencil’s thoughts about our theme this season and the theme of the show this week: Keep it local.
We recorded this episode near Blue Heron Lake in Golden Gate Park in May 2025.
Thumbnail photos, from top-left: (1) by Heejin, (2) by Qin, (3) by Nate Oliveira, (4) by Minh
