PAMELA PENISTON has designed sets for theatre and television and created computer graphics in New York City, Chicago and Atlanta. She served first as Art Director then Executive Producer of The Weather Channel, receiving 7 gold medals for computer graphics art direction from the Broadcast Design Association.

Since moving to San Francisco in 1984, Pam has designed and painted for more than 25 companies in the Bay Area, among them: Magic, The Willows, Brava, ACT, Purple Moon Dance Project, Anne Bluethenthal & Dancers and Stanford University. She was nominated for an OBIE award for her design of EDEN for the Negro Ensemble Company in New York and received Critic’s Circle Awards for her designs of POPPIES and COCONUT for Theatre Rhinoceros in San Francisco.

In 1994 she was appointed by Roberta Achtenberg to the San Francisco Cultural Affairs Task Force, where she served for two years on the main committee and implementation committee that developed the guidelines for the Cultural Equity Endowment for the SF Art Commission. In 2005 she was once again appointed to the Arts Task Force to protect funding to the Arts in San Francisco. Pam has worked extensively with Cultural Odyssey’s Medea Project, Theater for Incarcerated Women, as a writer, workshop/trainer and designer to the project and its shows.

Pamela served initially as the Board Chair for Qcc, the Center for Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Art & Culture, and is now the Executive Director. She has been the Artistic Director and curates the National Queer Arts Festivals produced by Qcc in the month of June all over the Bay Area.