Preserving the legacy of Bay Area Action’s environmental work from 1990–2000 and beyond.
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Bay Area Action had a lot of creativity, a direct result of having a tremendous fount of creative members. From Earth Circus’s theatrical performance-art-with-a-message to the fabulously imaginative names of Decadent Dinners (anyone remember the BAAcchnalian Banquet, the Sing and Cook Italian Party, or Wok on the Wild Side?), BAA’s brilliant members did activism with flair.
I’m planning a series of articles on the creativity of BAA, and I need your help. Below are the topics I’m considering — please provide feedback, memories, names, and ideas!
In this first article I’m going to focus on the artists who contributed to BAA’s visual communications over the years from 1990 to 2000 — the illustrators, cartoonists, and designers. I first got involved with BAA as a designer, so it’s a natural starting point for me.
Note: I’ve tried to reach everyone mentioned here. But this article is likely to be woefully incomplete — the BAA Archives are a work in progress. If you should be listed here and aren’t, or if you are listed here and you can tell me more, please reach out!
The iconic Earth Day 1990 Earth, Air, Fire, Water poster was produced by Robbie Conal, Debbie Ross, and Yukari Saito, and was printed by Westland Graphics, Burbank, CA.
In what could be called BAA’s first action, groups of volunteers were sent up and down the Peninsula to paste up the posters on walls. We’ll recount this story in more detail another time. But suffice it to say, the mayor of Palo Alto was nonplussed.
Robbie Conal is a noted guerrilla poster artist and illustrator whose work is in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the San Jose Museum of Art, among others. When asked in 2025 about the 1990 poster, his only comment was, “It’s so long ago, I don’t remember.”
So far we’ve been unable to locate Yukari Saito and Debbie Ross.
I recently heard from Mike Austin, BAA co-founder and creator of the original Rad Sheep design which adorned BAA T-shirts for years. Mike’s emblematic muscled sheep definitely became BAA’s mascot over the years.
“It was a fun play on the word ‘BAA’,” recalled Mike. “I think the idea behind it was that we were not your ordinary herd; we were bad-ass.”
In 1990 art like this was drawn by hand. “I do have a faint memory of drawing the muscle sheep with a Rapidograph pen — back in the days before Photoshop, scanners, and the internet.”
In the early days of BAA’s Eco-Store, the Rad Sheep was seen on buttons (now featured in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History) and T-shirts.
“I had a friend who owned a print company,” remembered Amy Peters, manager of the Eco-Store. “So I had him source us the cheapest 100% cotton T-shirts he could find — hopefully made without slave labor — and they used eco-inks that were less destructive.”
The shirts were a hit: “We had so many printed… They sold out. We printed them again,” said Amy.
Mike’s wistful drawing of a cool sheep with a can-do attitude has been an enduring emblem of the organization for over 30 years and can easily be considered a semi-official BAA logo.
Today, Mike is a successful illustrator; you can see his work at JingAndMike.com.
BTW: We’re thinking of reprinting the classic BAA Rad Sheep T-shirt for those who want to sport some retro bad-assery... Would you be interested?
Dennis DeRyke was a BAA regular who contributed many black and white illustrations for newsletters over the years, perhaps more than anyone else. Dennis always came through in a pinch when we needed art to fill a gap.
Asked in 2025 what his favorite illustration was, he answered: “One that comes to mind was The Hundredth Monkey snipping the fuse of a nuke bomb. I couldn’t make it to the event, but someone showed up with my illustration painted on her van. When I saw the photo I felt like I was making an impact.”
Jing Jing Tsong was another BAA co-founder and she and Mike designed the first BAA newsletters in 1990.
“Mike Austin and Jing Jing Tsong were very involved with Earth Day, they would help with graphics for the Earth Day fact sheets,” recalled Peter Drekmeier in a 2025 interview. “Jing created this kind of almost Picasso type Earth Day painting that got some publicity, and I think Paul Sposato ended up with it.”
Records in the BAA Archives show that Jing was already hard at work on the first BAA newsletter less than two weeks after Earth Day. Yet not until 2025 was it discovered that she was the creator of the famous hand-lettered “ACTION” masthead which adorned every newsletter and Action Alert for ten years.
Today, Jing is a successful author and illustrator; you can see her work at JingJingTsong.com.
Jeanelle Steiner was another early BAA volunteer who came from Earth Day 1990. She contributed several illustrations for fliers and newsletters over the years.
Jeanelle was one of seven artists collaborating with Chef Laura Stec for 1999’s Edible Art and Appetizers, featuring artistically adorned appetizers that “even Picasso would admire and Julia would enjoy” according to the press release.
Steve Curl was a Palo Alto artist and early BAA volunteer who contributed several illustrations, cartoons, and paintings to BAA over the years.
Steve donated a gorgeous color illustration of old-growth redwoods that was awarded in a raffle at the Festival for the Forests in 1991. Beth Delson reported in 2025 that she still has it in her home.
Steve was also one of seven artists collaborating with Laura Stec for 1999’s Edible Art and Appetizers.
Today, Steve is a successful fine artist and teacher; you can see his work at SteveCurl.com.
I was first introduced to Bay Area Action in 1993 when my friend and coworker Holly Kaslewicz asked if I ever did any pro bono design work. I was the in-house designer for the City of Palo Alto Recreation Department, where we both worked (Frank Lopez also worked there at the time). Holly, Frank, and Cindy Russell were starting to plan Earth Day 1993 and they wanted to update the classic Earth Day 1990 logo.
Just a year or so later, when Jim Steinmetz was orchestrating BAA’s move into 715 Colorado Avenue in Midtown Palo Alto, and BAA was looking for tenants, Holly and Frank asked me if I wanted to share office space with them for my fledgling design studio; they were opening Grass Roots Productions, a consultancy focused on event production and public relations.
Moving into the building put me across the hall from BAA, and collaborations flourished. Peter being the master of roping people in to do stuff for free or cheap, I went on to design fliers, newsletters, action alerts, posters, banners, signs, logos, annual reports, websites, and more for BAA over the next six or seven years, and kept that up afterward for Acterra (whose brand I created 100%).
In 1996 I designed a new logo and stationery system (letterhead, business cards, et al) for BAA, using the amazing “ACTION” masthead I’d seen on the cover of a hundred newsletters by then. It was such a powerful, bold wordmark, but it didn’t have the “BAY AREA” to go with it. By 1996, nobody could remember who made the original masthead back in 1990. (Although I can happily report we confirmed in 2025 that it was created by Jing Jing Tsong; see above.)
I got out my India ink, brushes, and some rough paper, and went to work trying to emulate the hand-lettered “ACTION” with new letters: B, A, Y, A, R, E, A… Eventually, after everything dried, I scanned them in and manipulated the letters in Photoshop until we had a new, complete logo that finally read: BAY AREA ACTION. It’s been BAA’s official logo ever since.
Aaron Zonka was a High Schools Group member in 2002–2004 when he was asked to draw some illustrations for T-shirts and newsletters.
Aaron became one of the Schools Group’s leaders, helping organize the Deep Green Global Training conference. When asked to write a reflection of his time at Acterra upon his graduation in 2004, he instead used his prolific talents to draw his touching goodbye.
Aaron is a prolific artist and art teacher living in Washington state; you can see his work on Instagram.
Ariel Shepard was an Oakland-based street artist who was hired by the Schools Group to collaborate on a large-format mural at the Mountain View Organic Garden.
The 30x15-foot mural was designed by Ariel and painted by members of the BAA Schools Group with high school students from Foothill Middle College, in 2002.
Ariel also was invited to run a workshop at Deep Green Global Training 2002 on “Art and Activism.” He also created the illustration featured on the fliers, website, and T-shirts for the event.
Ariel has a long history of creative work highlighting social justice causes. His 2010 mural of Oscar Grant can be seen at 17th Street and Telegraph in Oakland, CA.
As of spring 2023, the mural at BAA’s old office space / garden on Moffett Boulevard was still there.
These articles take many hours and days to research, write, add photos to, and post. I’m not in this to make money, but I’d like to be able to pay my bills. Please donate to the BAA History Project, which is my source of income for 2025.
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This article first published on Mark’s Substack.
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