MERCED, Calif. — Joel Aguilar’s murals are sprinkled throughout Merced County. They’re under highways, outside restaurants and in elementary schools — but the mural he just finished means more to him than most.
“It's more public and people will see it here, and they might see me,” Aguilar said as he started on the mural last week. “I feel like I need to really bring it, you know, like 100%.”
The mural sits between Bella Luna, an Italian restaurant, and a parking lot on Main Street. Aguilar used risers, mechanical sprayers and spray cans to create his art.
The words “Merced, California,” painted in golden hues on one side of the wall, were created mostly by his mentor and friend, Aaron Vickery. The other end depicts bees and butterflies flying out of a trumpet, as well as swallows and a blooming cactus. Aguilar calls the side with the birds and bees “Sound of a Memory.” For him, it describes home.
“I feel like I'm in a location where I can close my eyes, and I know how old I am, what time it is, how does the atmosphere feel,” he said. “It's something from my memory that when I look at this mural, I’m brought back to it.”
Downtown Merced received a colorful makeover recently.
The mural Aguilar completed with Vickery, who both go by the artist names “Gamut” and “Fasm,” was one of five large-scale murals by San Joaquin Valley artists that went up in alleyways and on the sides of local businesses earlier this month.
Live painting of the murals was one activity for Merced residents to sit in on during a celebration last week called Merced Arts Festival, or “Merced AF.” The event brought dozens of businesses and people together to celebrate and teach many forms of art.
“This is the time where we can make art social again,” said Patricia Pratt, a muralist and one of the organizers of the festival.
The event also comes just off the heels of downtown Merced’s designation as a cultural district by The California Arts Council in December. It is one of only two neighborhoods in the region to receive the designations. The other is the Dos Rios Arts and Culture District, Modesto.
The festival involved events throughout the week, including a photo gallery, a poetry slam, live music, a dance workshop and pottery demonstrations. Art increases economic development, beautification and pride in the city, Pratt said, but it also gives space for conversation and interaction.
“It doesn't have to be just a thing that you look at, but a thing that you discuss, and a thing that you come watch, and a thing that you participate in,” she said.
Message is up for interpretation
All the muralists in the festival created their own visions for their sprawling art projects. Reggie Gamboa, from Visalia, chose with his group to hint at local history on their wall.
The mural illustrates several divers exploring the remains of train cars submerged in water.
“We serve a lot of Valley towns, so a big theme is how the train cars played a role in these towns actually becoming bigger and big enough to sustain a small city vibe,” he said.
The art pays homage to how transportation changes in the Valley, Gamboa said, but even if people don’t see that in it, he hopes it gets them thinking.
“It's not necessarily about a specific subject matter, or trying to say a message, necessarily, but with undertones to where you can fill that message up,” he said.
Gamboa is part of a nonprofit organization called Urbanist Collective that sprang up over 10 years ago as a grassroots group in Tulare County. The organization aims to change the narrative around the exclusivity of art and create more community spaces for it.
“Our artwork was either too street, it was too political, it was too cartoony for [traditional artists],” said Erik Gonzalez, the executive director. “These groups were kind of used to the super traditional work, and that sparked the drive with us. We started our own thing.”
Joel Martin, also part of the Urbanist Collective, said he saw people already becoming curious about the murals in the early stages and asking questions because of the change in scenery.
“Even though it's just random colors on the wall, I think just having vibrant colors sticking out from somewhere where there wasn't color, I think that alone is already bringing people in,” he said.
Aaron Vickery, who worked on the “Merced, California” portion of the mural at Bella Luna, also said murals are a big hit for the community. He did a similar version for Modesto a few years ago, he said, and it became hugely popular among residents and outsiders alike.
“It's just a little thing to me, but when it represents a whole community, people fall in love with it and it becomes part of the identity,” Vickery said. “The community just rallies around it.”
The murals were already attracting outsiders before they were finished. Elizabeth Claes, an educator from Turlock, came with her husband to look at the pieces being painted early on in their construction. They said the festival is inspiring for building out the art scene in the San Joaquin Valley.
“Art breeds more art, and so when there are spaces that are open to artists and what they are doing creatively, that momentum is given the wind that it needs,” Claes said. “It's given the funding, it's given the political capital to be able to do it. It's given the community support. If it is given those things — that's like the food and air — then it will grow, because artists want to see other artists.”
Growing into an artist
The messages intended in Joel Aguilar’s murals over the years have evolved. A Livingston native who grew up drawing, Aguilar said his life changed when he studied abroad in Florence, Italy for a year through Stanislaus State.
“I would just go out with a sketchbook in Florence, and I would just do art,” he said. “I would draw it anywhere, everywhere, with a canvas [or] on a napkin. I decided to really embrace that, and when I came back to the Valley, I felt like I shouldn't hide that.”
He slowly came into the mural scene and was pushed into spray cans by Vickery.
One of Aguilar’s first murals is painted a block over from “Sound of a Memory” on a Mexican restaurant’s wall. It shows a crowd of graduates throwing their hats up in the air and a poem about a lost child. Aguilar said he’s become more established and bold since painting that mural several years ago.
He’s grown into his artistic identity, he said, much like the city he lives in.
“I can play ball,” he said. “I can be part of the artists’ journey.”
