5 STUNNING BAY AREA MURALS
Here are five of our most stunning we've painted throughout the greater San Francisco Bay Area over the years. Each mural was painted by Bay Area Muralist Maxfield Bala and team using spray paints and acrylics.
1 AGRIHOOD- SANTA CLARA
Our Mission working with the team at Core Builders, the City of Santa Clara, and Agrihood was to develop and paint a series of four murals at the new sustainable community development. The project was led by our lead muralist Maxfield Bala who in collaboration with the Agrihood team desired to highlight the local area's iconography and its vibrant history in relation to the theme of the Agrihood development. Agrihood itself is a sustainable community whose property includes a stunning garden and park that provides its tenants with fresh fruits, herbs and vegetables. Many of these tenants being veterans and low income residents from the County of Santa Clara.
The murals are composed of two end cap murals facing Winchester Blvd, with one premier wall and one large scale water tower spanning three stories in height. The end caps highlight Santa Clara's former namesake as "The Valley of the Heart's Delight" -named after the high concentration of orchards, trees, flowers and plants. The compositions feature the area's top produced crops among local butterflies and wildlife like the endangered San Joaquin kit fox.
The Premier wall features a classic take on a postcard style mural. Greetings from Santa Clara California reads boldy across the wall with each letter featuring prominent pieces of iconography specific to Santa Clara. From the historic train station, the peace rose, Santa Clara Mission, or the local university. To the right a large leaf cutter bee pollinates a Golden Poppy Flower further paying tribute to the area's farming history. The lettering is flanked by two "Most Beautiful Jewel" flowers native to the area.
The Largest of the mural paintings at the Agrihood housing development is a three story corrugated metal water tower. The curved water tower required a series of unique design and painting techniques in order to properly develop and transfer the mural design. The mural paintings design features a series of local wildlife including a great blue heron and Monarch Butterflies among Apricot blossoms and other local flowers. The murals required two months to paint and were treated with a series of protective UV and graffiti resistant clear coats to protect and preserve the murals for years to come.
2 SPARE THE AIR- EMERYVILLE
Our mission working with the Bay Area Air Quality Management district, Spare the Air campaign, Allison and Partners and Bay Street Emeryville was to create a large scale mural painting to beautify the Bay Street Campus in collaboration with supporting the Spare the Air campaign. The Air District’s goal is to keep the air for Bay Area residents safe, by encouraging alternative options to single car trips. In the city of Emeryville, we’d like to remind passersby that the Bay Area is an active, inclusive community, with so many accessible options for making your commute and transportation healthier for all (walk, bike, train, bus, ferry, or even a hybrid of bike+mass transit. Keeping this idea in mind we strategically developed a concept to fit a dynamic mural that would work for all parties involved. The proposed site featured a vast variety of surface levels, surface materials and obstructions like doors, vents, railings and lights. These factors called for a dynamic mural design with strategically placed images in order to remove image distortion and effectively promote the values of our artistic vision and the Spare the Air campaign. Through multiple design rounds with input from the Mayor of Emeryville we landed on a colorful design paying homage to the relationship of public transit's ability to create a cleaner environment friendly to the bay area's natural habitats and wildlife. This included the feature of active modes of transportation like bike riding, cycling and electric scooter riding along with more traditional modes like the bus or train. Moving from left to right the mural features a Monarch butterfly and bicycle rider. A rider enters an electric double decker bus as a Great Blue Heron flies by. A cyclist looks back onto reeds breaking way to a Pelican. The mayor of Emeryville's dog pokes in head out from the bottom of the scene while an electric scooter rider paces down the bay front pathway. A Plover bird native to the local wetlands spread its wings aside a California Golden Poppy flower and a large Spare the Air logo. A man takes his bike off the train to the right of this logo while bold colors layered upon one another help to create movement, and depth throughout the mural. The mural took three weeks to complete and spans 110' wide and over 13' tall and was clear coated with an anti graffiti coating to have it outlast the elements. The mural is a permanent installation in Emeryville, California and was painted by our lead muralist, Maxfield Bala in conjunction with our mural team.
3 COUNTY OF SONOMA MURAL
Our mission working with the County of Sonoma was to create a mural painting that would build community, and rehabilitate a highly trafficked intersection of the Downtown Penngrove California area. The wall was the focus of frequent graffiti, and overgrowth and transformed into a vibrant mural featuring local wildlife. The mural moving from left to right features Eastern Tailed Blue Butterfly, Western Bluebird, Pacific Hound's Tounge Flower, Mountain Lion, Baby Blue Eyes Flower and a Mule Deer. All native to the Sonoma County. This mural was painted by lead artist Maxfield Bala using a variety of high quality aerosol spraypaints. The mural was made possible with help from community members and the students of Penngrove school who promoted the idea of the murals creation to the County of Sonoma.
4 SONOMA MURAL
Our mission working with Public Storage was to create a mural painting that reflected the best of Sonoma Counties culture, industry and iconography. Based off this creative briefing we applied our signature collage style format to paint a 13' tall by 40' wide exterior wall mural. Moving from left to right the mural features a bushel of grapes to represent the Sonoma Wine Country, a trout is seen flipping out of the water, as a dairy cow is seen grazing to represent the counties dairy industry. Our state flower the California Poppy blooms while while the mustard flower, a prominent flower to the region sprout up aside the dairy cow painting. A hot air balloon often found floating in the northern end of Sonoma County sports the word "Sonoma" in bold letters" while an old pick up truck ships wine barrels and a chicken pokes it head out of the right hand side of the scene. The murals elements are all laid upon rolling hills and a blue sky. This realistic mural was painted by mural artist Maxfield Bala a Sonoma County native. This 13' foot tall by 40' wide outdoor commercial mural project was painted using acrylics, latex, and aerosols spray paints. It was ultimately clear coated upon our clients request to protect against UV rays and weather as well as graffiti. The public art mural can be seen directly off highway 101 North heading towards San Francisco, Ca.
VISIT SWITZERLAND- SAN FRANCISCO CONSULATE MURAL
Our mission working with Switzerland Tourism was to paint a mural on the residence of the Switzerland Consulate General After a photo taken by Canadian influencer Callum Snape was designated as the desired mural image, we replicated the photo to speciation only adjusting the photo to accommodate the elongated brick surface and railing. The mural painting depicts a backpacker making his way through the brilliant SwissAlps alongside a mountain lake and native grasses.
