Introducing the 2026 Hearts in San Francisco Artists

The San Francisco General Hospital Foundation (SFGHF) is pleased to announce the 21 artists selected to participate in the Hearts in San Francisco 2026 public art project supporting excellence in patient care and innovation at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (ZSFG). The 2026 Hearts in San Francisco series will include 12 Table Top Heart sculptures, and 9 Mini Heart sculptures.

Hearts in San Francisco is one of the most widely recognized public art projects around the world. Since the project’s inception in 2004, San Francisco Bay Area artists have created more than 500 hearts that have gone on display all across the city of San Francisco and beyond, from Union Square to the lobbies and conference rooms of corporate supporters, including Bank of America, Genentech, Intel, Kaiser, Twitter, and Wells Fargo. Each Heart is a unique, one-of-a-kind work of art and celebrates the diversity of San Francisco through designs made of acrylic paints, mosaic art, mixed media sculptures, and more.

Hearts artists will be sharing their progress on their sculptures on social media. Follow SFGHF on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn for updates.

Melissa Dickenson, San Francisco, Instagram

Melissa Dickenson is a San Francisco–based artist whose work explores the intersection of material, memory, and place through abstract landscapes rooted in the natural world. Using pigments made from soil, sand, charcoal, and rock — often combined with synthetic hues — she creates layered compositions that evoke the quiet, dreamlike quality of memory. Her intuitive process of pouring, tilting, and wiping paint allows a landscape to emerge on the canvas as both a portrait of place and a tactile record of experience. While primarily working in painting, her practice also utilizes photography, drawing, sculpture, and site-specific research.

Nala Kun, San Francisco, Instagram

Nala Kun is a Russian-born American artist living and working in the heart of San Francisco. A self-taught painter whose earliest inspirations came from her grandmother’s hyper-realistic embroidery and loom-woven tapestries, Kun earned a degree in advertising and marketing before spending a decade founding and leading two event-production firms across Russia. At age 28, she followed her lifelong calling to become a full-time artist. Kun creates vivid, kinetic spirals in high-contrast oils. Each painting unites the precision of her Siberian roots with the inventive energy of her adopted home, becoming both a surgical act and a meditative rite.

Suzanne Baxter, San Francisco, Instagram

Suzanne Baxter’s lifelong relationships with visual art, numbers, and incessant doodling have led her to create beautiful abstract paintings that she describes as a meeting of the minds, where her left brain and right brain find common ground.

Charles Gadeken, San Francisco Bay Area, Instagram

Charles Gadeken is an industrial artist working in the Bay Area for over 25 years. Skilled in the manipulation of metals, Charles makes copper, bronze, and steel pieces of varying dimensions and functionalities—from a tabletop fire flower that illuminates an intimate space to a 30ft tall LED weeping willow tree that graces a public plaza. Inspired by the objects, structures and processes in the world around us, Charles’ art depicts natural objects in fantastic ways and realizes the potential for serendipity in everyday life. Often incorporating and developing technology for various effects—LEDs, flame, hydraulics, and electricity—to increase the visual and physical impact of his work, he seeks to instill a sense of play into the environment.

Nathaniel J. Bice, San Francisco, Instagram

Nathaniel J. Bice is a muralist, plein air painter, scale model builder, and craftsman whose works encourage their viewer to celebrate the beauty of the San Francisco Bay Area. His work has been shown in galleries and shops around the Bay Area, such as STUDIO Gallery, änalog Gallery, Queer Arts Featured, Fleet Wood, The Drawing Room, Sanchez Art Center, and Gearbox Gallery, and in other places such as The Studio Door in San Diego, and Pyramid Atlantic Art Center in Maryland. He is an award-winning participant in the annual Frank Bette Paint Out in Alameda.

Millie Kwong and Carmen Wong, San Francisco, Instagram

Millie Kwong is a San Francisco–based watercolor artist and founder of Dream Design Doodle, a studio dedicated to capturing the charm and character of neighborhood life through hand-painted scenes. Carmen Wong, an incoming freshman at Galileo High School in San Francisco, is an emerging young artist with a passion for drawing, sewing, and dance. Together, this mother-and-daughter team merges experience and youthful imagination to create art that bridges generations, cultures, and the unique spirit of San Francisco. Their collaborative process celebrates heritage, community, and the shared joy of creating from the heart.

Kalani Ware, Emeryville, Instagram

Kalani Ware is a multidisciplinary artist currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area. His work spans multiple disciplines, drawing inspiration from his multicultural background. Born and raised in Oakland, CA, with roots in Hawai‘i, Kalani incorporates influences from both cultures to create vibrant and thought-provoking works of art. His use of color, shape, and texture reflects the diversity of our society and the interconnectedness of all people.

ARTifact Studio, San Francisco, Instagram

Founder and Creative Director of ARTifact in San Francisco since 2010, Lauren Sharp has built an award-winning program that blurs the line between art class and art as lived storytelling. Her work brings together children, families, and communities together through hands-on projects that are as thoughtful as they are magical.

Taiko Fujimura, Oakland, Instagram

Taiko Fujimura is a San Francisco–based mixed media artist working with watercolor, ink, acrylic, and oil on diverse surfaces. She carefully selects materials to create layered works that draw on personal experiences, relationships, and cultural influences. Her work incorporates both vivid and muted palettes and explores harmony through the unification of contrasts such as chaos and order, industrial and organic, and mind and body. Influenced by Japanese aesthetics—particularly wabi-sabi and traditional calligraphy she began studying at the age of six—Fujimura’s art reflects a balance between tradition and contemporary expression.

Leyla, San Francisco, Instagram

Leyla was born in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, into a family of two artists, where creativity was part of daily life. She studied at an art school for a year before continuing her journey as a self-taught and family-taught artist. She later lived in Ukraine before moving to San Francisco in 2018, where the city has opened her heart in countless ways, inspiring new directions in her work. Her passion lies in abstract contemporary art. Hearts in San Francisco marks her first open call and public exhibition.

Amaura Arts, San José, Instagram

Amaura Arts offers a variety of artwork, including landscape paintings, abstract and more recently alcohol ink art, that range in size and style. Her work explores the vibrant colors and fluid nature of alcohol inks, creating pieces that are both energetic and calming. With every stroke, she channels her passion for colors into captivating forms that come to life on paper.

Laura Shieh, San Francisco

Laura Shieh is an amateur artist and Bay Area native; she is currently based in San Francisco. Laura creates most of her work traditionally, with color pencil or acrylic paint on paper. She also enjoys exploring other mediums including ink, fiber / fabric, beads, cardboard, clay, and more. Laura has been creating art for 20+ years, and has her parents to thank for always encouraging her creativity – their home is still decorated with the drawings she and her siblings produced as children.

Natasha Kramskaya, San José, Instagram

Natasha Kramskaya is known for her portraits, but she also creates still lifes, landscapes—drawn from both life and memory—as well as abstract works. Working with acrylic, oil, and mixed media, Natasha has developed a distinctive technique that features wide, visceral brushstrokes and the direct application of paint from the tube. Her work beautifully balances realism and abstraction, creating a captivating visual narrative.

Ana Bianchi, Walnut Creek, Instagram

Ana Bianchi’s lifelong love of color is what connects it all and helps her comfortably move from one discipline to another and from one technique to another. Her new book Color Curious (Chronicle Books) illustrates her ideas and inspiration around a variety of color themes combining essays with her photography, illustrations and more, and as you read her texts, you will discover her deep interest in art history, world cultures and the pursue of creative ideas through the common thread of color.

Eluterio Lopez, San Francisco, Instagram

Eluterio Lopez is a Queer latinX Artist and Fashion Designer, born and raised in Lodi, CA. With years of alcohol abuse, Eluterio decided to give up his addiction and pursue an artistic career. Their art has been a guiding tool in becoming the person they are today. Their work hopes to inspire those around them to give oneself a chance to fall in love with their passions over their vices. They strive to create experiences through art that allows artists to come together to create and learn from one another without intimidation. Their work also focuses on the beauty of San Francisco and inner child concepts. With their first passion of illustration, they combine soft colorful paint strokes with striking line work.

Dana Kornfeld, Menlo Park, Instagram

Dana Kornfeld is a Bay Area artist whose work seeks to capture the resilience and beauty of the human experience. Her work is rich and deeply layered, reflecting the complexity and emotion woven into each piece. Through her artwork, Dana strives to create connections by conveying the universality of the human experience and the intricate tapestry of life.

Barbara Bussler, Redwood City, Instagram

Barbara Bussler was born and raised in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Through art classes in school and traditional crafts at home, she tried a wide array of techniques and materials over the years but found her real passion in creating mosaics. Since taking an introductory course in Half Moon Bay in 2001, Barbara has made and studied mosaics intensively, taking classes in the U.S. (at IMA under Laurel True and at the yearly American Mosaic Conference) and in Italy (to study the traditional Ravenna Method under Luciana Notturni, as well as contemporary mosaics under Giulio Menossi and Dino Maccini). Her mosaic work incorporates mixed media, including discarded, collected, or recycled materials as well as precious glass or gold smalti. She is a member of the Full Spectrum Mosaic Artists of Silicon Valley, the Society of American Mosaic Artists, and the Deutsche Organisation fuer Mosaikkunst, and a regular volunteer at FabMo in Sunnyvale.

Jeni Paltiel, Oakland, Instagram

Jeni Paltiel is a visual artist, graphic artist, illustrator and educator inspired by urban environments, the natural world, and the interface between the two, from city birds to sidewalk weeds. Her natural curiosity and whimsical style combine to make art that’s fun, engaging and encourages viewers to look more closely at the world around them.

Gigi Huie, San Carlos, Instagram

Gigi Huie is a self-taught watercolor artist specializing in botanicals, landscapes, and abstract designs. She creates so others can pause to appreciate natural beauty, notice their surroundings, and let the art awaken a memory to reflect on.

Nika Mariano, Daly City

Nika Mariano is a Filipina-American and a first-generation nursing student, Health Advocate at San Francisco General Hospital, and novice artist eager to give back to her community through creativity and service. Whether in the pages of a sketchbook, along the ivory keys of a piano, or even scribbled on the backsides of stray napkins, she loves to create any chance she gets, because it grants her a chance to connect with others in ways even words fail to express.

Sadie Ehrlich, San Francisco

Sadie Ehrlich is a seventeen-year-old student from San Francisco, currently entering her senior year of high school. Working primarily with acrylic and oil paints, her creative practice also extends to drawing, crocheting, and sewing. Sadie has received painting lessons each year of high school, where she has had opportunities to grow her technical skills and personal style. In 2020, Sadie started a custom dog drawing business to raise money for Family Dog Rescue, where she also volunteered at and fostered from.