By admin 
Sacramento-based Filipina artist Jamie Pesquiza Cardenas first saw the mural on the side of the Wellspace Health building on Stockton Boulevard in Little Saigon in February 2024. The piece of public wall art, commissioned by the nonprofit Wide Open Walls, was meant to celebrate the Lunar New Year and Asian culture.
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But what Cardenas saw astonished her.
Markings depicted on an image of a Kalinga warrior from an indigenous group in the Philippines were inaccurate and none of the artists involved in creating the mural identified as Asian, Asian American or Pacific Islander.
To Cardenas, and other members of her community, the mural disrespected both Vietnamese and Filipino cultures.
“They want our art” she wrote on Instagram that year, “but can’t even fix their faces enough to tell our stories.”
Two years later, the mural can still be seen on the building, but much of the “controversial” aspects were painted out. Murals of a variety of styles continue to adorn buildings, walls and parks in the Sacramento region, with varying degrees of issues and controversy and connections to art, history and community.
That mural, and many others throughout Sacramento, were part of the Wide Open Walls initiative, whose mission was to spotlight diversity through the arts. The nonprofit promised more accountability following the 2024 complaints.
David Sobon, CEO of Wide Open Walls, disputed allegations of exploitation and unfair treatment then, saying the organization had been dedicated to engaging with the Sacramento mural community since its founding in 2016.
In a recent interview, Sobon said that Wide Open Walls has listened to the criticism it received in 2024, and that recent projects have been developed “individually with their respective community and organizational partners rather than through a single citywide process.”
Sobon said Wide Open Walls covers an artist’s costs including paint, materials, equipment, insurance, travel, lodging and production support.
“Our purpose has never been to replace Sacramento’s mural community, but to contribute to it by creating additional opportunities for local artists while also bringing nationally and internationally recognized artists to Sacramento,” Sobon said. “Those relationships have helped raise the visibility of Sacramento artists and the city’s public-art landscape.”
Some of those recent projects have extended beyond the city, including murals in the Orangevale community, one outside the Orangevale History Museum on Hazel Avenue and one on Kenneth Grove Eastment along Greenback Lane, according to Becky Herz, the district administrator of the Orangevale Recreation and Park District.
“David Sobon met with community groups, helped articulate a vision, assisted with fundraising efforts, and brought in skilled artists who exceeded expectations,” Herz said. “The vibrant murals have been well-received by our community, and I’m proud that OVparks was part of bringing more public art into Orangevale.”
The public art world
Drive down Broadway, Franklin Boulevard and through Southside Park and you can see a glimpse of that “public-art landscape” Sobon referred to.
The number of muralists and artists in Sacramento far outnumber the demand. And for artists who want to create without the backing of a formal organization or an official commission, navigating the seemingly endless hurdles of city permits and clearances is difficult.
Calculating the exact number of artists in the city is nearly impossible, according to Sacramento Public Arts Commissioner Donald Gensler. But he estimates the number of professional muralists to be “at least in the hundreds” — with a finite number of many public art grants to go around.
But the mural medium persists.
The history of murals in Sacramento starts with the Royal Chicano Air Force. Founded by José Montoya and Esteban Villa in 1969 at Sacramento State, and invigorated by the United Farmworkers Movement and Chicano activism of the time, the men encouraged their students to tap into their Mexican heritage and personal experiences for their art.
Montoya and Villa would collectively exhibit their work along with their students. This egalitarian approach led to the formation of the Rebel Chicano Art Front. The group’s acronym would often be confused for the Royal Canadian Air Force and was later renamed the Royal Chicano Air Force.
“The collective also helped to achieve a goal of the Chicano art movement, which was to make art for the benefit of the community, eliminating barriers between ‘low’ and ‘high art’ and create artworks not dictated by Western European aesthetics,” said Terezita Romo, an art historian and curator specializing in Chicana/o studies.
The RCAF members’ main prerogative was to serve their community through art and political and social action. RCAF members were inspired by Mexican murals and artists, including José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera and David Alfaro.
“However, they soon began incorporating their own artistic styles and iconography that related to them, derived from a Mexican heritage but filtered through an American lived experience and politicized by the Chicano movement,” Romo said.
An organized system of having murals approved by the city didn’t exist in those early days. . In 1977 the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission created one; now the city has the Office of Arts and Culture.
Nearly five decades later, Sacramento-based artist Richard Alcala wanted to paint a new Chicano mural honoring Indigenous heritage.
Alcala’s Southside Park mural boasts 11 panels. In vibrant blues and sunset oranges, maroon reds and forest greens, the panels pay homage to the Zoot Suiters, indigenous tribes such as the Nisenan from Nevada City and the UFW march that came to Southside Park in August, 2022. The mural, unveiled this summer, had been three years in the making. It was vandalized in July and included an anti-Donald Trump message written in Morse code, that has since been painted over.
To gain city approval, Alcala underwent several phases of review, starting with the mandatory application process. That included various letters of support, a written presentation, a neighborhood survey and a licensing agreement with the city.
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Local Sacramento artists painted the panels and Alcala put $40,000 of his own money into the project.
Some might consider that effort and cost extraordinary for an art form that has a shelf life and is extremely vulnerable. Paint can chip and fade and public art faces the constant threat of being vandalized.
That’s exactly what happened to a panel that’s part of Alcala’s project. He asked for donations for its repair. “One lady who jogs here… wrote me a check of $2,000, which is amazing,” Alcala said.
Still, vandalism is a risk he’s willing to take.
“We’re hoping people love it enough to respect it, and obviously we have to put three coats of CLEAR (sealer) on it to protect that,” he said.
‘This is a community mural’
Others share Alcala’s challenges in making murals in Sacramento.
Austin-born visual artist Beth Consetta Rubel was commissioned by the city in 2022 to be the lead artist on a mural in the Northgate/Gardenland neighborhoods. Painted with vibrant hues of red, orange and yellow, the mural depicts folklorico dancers in traditional dress. Large painted monarch butterflies flutter between the dancing figures.
Rubel, who has been living in Northgate for the past 10 years, got the idea for the mural when she attended the neighborhood’s Day of the Dead event, where high school students performed.
“Dance is a universal language that connects the old generation to the young generation, and that’s very important to the Gardenland/Northgate community, to have that be captured on the wall because this is a community mural,” Rubel said.
Rubel met with members of the community, along with activists to understand what was important to them. The mural itself took a year to develop. During that time, Rubel said her pregnant assistant was confronted by people alleging to be gang members, and they received warnings that the mural would be tagged.
Members of the neighborhood organized an online campaign against Rubel because of her race. As a biracial Black woman from Texas, many residents of Northgate and Gardenland felt she wasn’t fit to paint a mural for a Latino community.
“This specific project has been the most challenging and painful and beautiful experience all at once for me because I did face a lot of backlash for my race and ethnicity,” Rubel said.
Brown Issues is a non-profit organization advocating for Latino and Brown youth in California. Its Instagram account has 489,000 followers and the organization posted a video in April 2022 featuring Cardenas along with Northgate and Gardenland community members inviting people to come paint. The video attracted upwards of 8,500 views.
“I understand the politics behind it because this was one of the first city-funded projects that this community has had since 1984, from my research, so I understand how meaningful it was and that’s why I also was not going to back down from this project because I was selected for a reason,” Rubel said.
She believes the mural can serve the community by making spaces safer.
“This wall was getting tagged three times a week before the mural came up here,” Rubel said. “So it says something that it hasn’t been tagged since.”
On an early July morning, light filtered into Cardenas’ studio. Postcards, prints of murals and sculptures, a poster of “Asians for a Liberated Palestine” covered one wall; sculptures and trinkets littered every surface.
Cardenas sat in front of a large welded wire mesh with bits of fabric woven in crisscrosses.
“This is a follow-up on Wide Open Walls,” she said. She began to weave the patterns in demonstration.
Pushing mural art forward
According to the Wide Open walls site, the last festival was in 2023. It commissioned a mural by artist Shane Grammer on the Bruceville Terrace Skilled Nursing Center. In July, it unveiled artist Daniel Pendersenn’s town of Hood’s first regional history mural.
Cardenas has forged her own path. She set about bringing “Threads of Belonging” to life. Working with Sacramento-based artists Pachia L. Vang and Ren Allakthani, the artwork is made from colorful fibers woven in traditional Palestinian, Hmong and Filipino/Ilocano patterns.
With no commission for the project, Cardenas, Vang and Allakthani applied for grants and held fundraisers. They say it was an onerous process to get the mural approved by the city.
“Because it’s metal, we have to work with a licensed metalworker, and the fees have been crazy,” Cardenas said. “Most of the grant fundraising that we got is actually for fees. It’s not being paid as an artist, and it’s terrible. And then the second part is talking about culture like this with the community is difficult. It’s not just rainbows and butterflies. It’s actually like shadow work.”
With the help of Sacramento Councilmember and Congressional candidate Mai Vang, they were able to raise enough funds to bring the project to life.
The mural was unveiled at the Valley Hi-North Laguna Library on Aug. 31. Cardenas hopes it signals a return to the tradition of creating art that reflects the wider community.
“I hope (”Threads of Belonging”) creates more opportunities for artists and cultural artists like me, Pachia and Ren, that people will feel brave enough to go against these systems and learn how to work with the city and work with others,” she said.
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