Under the Sun: Veronica Napoles, accidental activist

The Sun’s Anna Pier finds out more about the co-founder of Wake Up Sonoma, artist and designer Veronica Napoles.

What brought you to Sonoma? While I was living in Marin, sharing a studio in San Rafael with 20 other artists there and working in the city, I bought a little house in the Springs. That was 2009. In 2016 I thought, why not live here? Being an artist is somewhat a monastic lifestyle, and I completely redesigned the house for me, with a studio. A space for my art. My son was grown. He lives in Penngrove. I’m going to be a grandmother very soon. 

You’re Cuban-American, but a progressive Democrat? Yes, no one can believe it. My parents emigrated from Havana to Manhattan, Spanish Harlem, in the ’40s. I was raised to be bilingual. My sister was born in Cuba, but I was born here. I used to tease her that I could be president of the United States and she couldn’t. Eventually the New York climate just didn’t agree with my father, so in ’58 we moved to Miami. I got a Bachelors in Fine Arts at the University of Miami. 

Did you ever visit Cuba? In ’58 for the first time. That was just before the revolution. I was used to Manhattan, tall dark buildings and just a sliver of sky. Walking along the Malecón, the city was a panoply of color, music, sound. I couldn’t believe it.

How did you get to California? When I was working on my BFA, my father reminded me it was a difficult row to hoe for a fine artist, so I decided to study architecture. I came to UC Berkeley where I got a Masters in Architecture in ’76. I started to work for a prominent international design firm located in San Francisco, Landor and Associates. My first job was designing the Petrobras gas stations in Brazil. On the plane on the way I was seated between Walter Landor and another director of the company, and they told me I’d be very useful because I was bilingual. They didn’t know the language was Portuguese! As it turned out, I could get along in Spanish. It was very interesting working for Landor but eventually I started my own firm in San Francisco. I had as many as 15 employees at one time – plus a husband, a young son, and an elderly mother I was caring for. As Zorba the Greek would say, “the full catastrophe.” I also taught a design course at UCB, and one at Sonoma State. 

Tell me more. My firm’s focus was on corporate identity, what’s now called “branding.” My firm created the corporate identity for the Marin Water Agency, AutoDesk, and Chevron, among others. It’s not a logo, it’s about systematic identity for the entity. My book, Corporate Identity Design came out 35 years ago and is still in print. I reserved the digital rights for it, so I am going to repackage it as an ebook under the title Branding Basics, A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Lasting Impression. I firmly believe that one of the reasons Wake Up Sonoma has been so successful in a short period of time is because of a strong visual and verbal cohesiveness. We have 350+ people. 

What is the purpose of Wake Up Sonoma? It’s a watchdog citizens community group,  created to protect the culture, diversity, and inclusivity of Sonoma Valley. All of us on the steering committee – the “good trouble makers” – connected at the two meetings Mattson held at his Boyes Post office building about the Springs plaza. Everyone had been on their own island, worrying about the Mattson properties. Wake Up Sonoma fills the need for a central repository for all things LeFever-Mattson. We will educate, do research, and community outreach, and advocate for transparency. So we’re about shedding light, which is what the community has been asking for. It’s on everyone’s mind. The community wants transparency. 

Can you explain? I’m proud of saying I’m a progressive Democrat. Why don’t Mattson and his partner LeFever come out in the open and say what they believe in? Why hide? What are they, with their strong right-wing connections and beliefs, doing here in Sonoma, an environment that has always believed in diversity and inclusion? I have been doing research on them since 2016. Their various LLCs own $235 million in property; they are the largest non-winery landowner in Sonoma Valley. To learn about Tim LeFever, look at the Council for National Policy, which he’s part of. And see the documentary People You May Know about the Alt-Right.  

What can Wake Up Sonoma accomplish? The real work has to come on a local governmental level. LeFever and Mattson took advantage of an inefficient City government. And Mattson was trying to use to his advantage county funds long-destined for the people of the Springs. Ultimately I hope to see Wake Up Sonoma become a 501.c.4 so we can make political endorsements. But soon I want to step back into an advisory role. Our steering committee, the “good troublemakers,” are their own superpowers. 

You call yourself an “accidental activist.”  I’ve never been involved in protests, even though I went to UC Berkeley. I’m an arts activist and creative influencer. Art can change a whole community. The Springs, which I live in the heart of, is a wonderful creative environment. I would love to see it as an arts destination. A creative activist engages socially through a medium that focuses on participatory human interaction and social discourse. 

Your public roles? I’ve been involved with the arts and the community locally. As chair of the Sonoma Culture and Fine Arts commission from 2017 to the present. As a volunteer at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Marin, and a docent at the DiRosa. In community engagement,  I served on the Citizens Advisory group to the Springs Specific Plan. I also chaired the Springs Community Alliance executive group just before the MAC was created.  

Tell me more about your art. I never met a medium I didn’t like. Ceramic sculptures. Painting of course. My portrait of Amanda Gorman – she’s our Poet Laureate – hung in the DeYoung this past year in the Alice Neel exhibit. In the painting, the words of her poem, “The Hill We Climb,”  that she read at President Biden’s inauguration, are written on her braids. The original is in Sonoma in a private collection. 

Did you always want to be an artist? I knew I wanted to be an artist when I was eight, in third grade. I won a design competition. And of course I eventually became a commercial designer. My life is all about art. I studied with Chester Arnold, whom I love of course. Everyone does. 

Now that I’m retired, pursuing my art practice is my main focus. And I am so happy about being a grandmother, with my son and his family nearby. 

Wake Up Sonoma will hold a Town Hall at the Sonoma Community Center on February 23. Find out more at Wakeupsonoma.com.