Self-taught artist Pacolli has spent two decades hand-printing one-of-a-kind apparel from her apartment, first in São Paulo and for the past sixteen years in San Francisco, letting her work take her from indie art shows to a Super Bowl football.
Twenty years of printing in apartments. Not studios, not workshops: apartments, first in São Paulo and then in San Francisco, where the work has continued for sixteen years. That domestic, self-determined starting point is not incidental to who Pacolli is as an artist. It is the whole story.
As a self-taught practitioner, she spent years feeling like she did not belong. No formal training, no institutional grounding, just an approach to printmaking that evolved through constant experimentation until it became, undeniably, her own.
“For a long time that made me feel like I didn’t belong,” she says, “but later that became my style.”
The vindication came gradually and then unmistakably: artists she admired wanting to trade with her, invitations to shows around the world, commissions from MTV, Vans, Converse and Volcom. Most recently, a commission to paint a football for the 2026 Super Bowl Experience LIX.
Every piece Pacolli makes is a 1/1: a singular object, hand-printed, shaped by curiosity and improvisation rather than edition logic or repeatability. The apparel is the canvas, the apartment is the studio, and the process stays rooted in the playful, process-led energy that has defined the practice from the beginning. Her work has been featured at Pictures on Walls in the UK, Fecal Face in San Francisco and Choque Cultural in Brazil, placing her consistently within the most credible independent art contexts on both sides of the Atlantic.
Before printmaking became her full focus, Pacolli worked as a TV producer in Brazil, a background that gave her a lasting love of collaboration and creative problem-solving. She also ran an independent gallery in São Paulo, organising shows that brought together artists, musicians and designers, an energy that still shapes how she connects people and projects today.
Her advice, distilled from two decades of self-directed making: “Stay organised and fearless.”
Pacolli is a San Francisco-based artist originally from São Paulo, working across printmaking, textiles and mixed media. Each piece is a singular, hand-printed object.
ARTIST LINKS
@pacolli
@pacollistudio
pacollistudio.bigcartel.com
1/1 hand-printed apparel and mixed media works. Photography: Fabio da Motta (except football image).
