By admin 
Maren Conrad said it was unfortunate a mural she’d painted outside Vic’s Ice Cream in 2021 was painted over Tuesday morning, leaving a blank white wall.
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But her biggest gripe was a claim that Vic’s made on Instagram that it had attempted to contact her.
“I don’t have a single missed phone call, missed voicemail, missed text message, missed email,” Conrad said in a phone interview Wednesday morning. “I mean, I’m not a hard person to get a hold of.”
The landmark Land Park ice cream shop – which reopened in January following a change in ownership after the death of longtime owner Craig Rutledge – painted over Conrad’s mural that adorned the outer wall of Brew Bird, a cafe that shares a building with Vic’s. Jason Williams, a hairstylist working across the street Tuesday evening said that the whitewashing happened around 10 a.m.
Work that Conrad created across the street as part of the same project appears to have been untouched. But even just the destruction of one mural was enough to cause a stir online.
“It took months of planning and thousands of dollars to bring this incredible mural to (Land Park),” wrote Jennifer Madriago-Benton, owner of Artisan Salon across the street from Vic’s, in a Facebook post that has more than 200 comments. “It is heartbreaking to watch them paint over it as though it means nothing to our community.”
Vic’s owner Samantha Grifone, who purchased the business in 2024 after the mural was painted, declined to comment. The business acknowledged in its Instagram post on Tuesday that the mural “been a special part of the community for many years” and promised that a new mural would be created.
The background of the mural
Conrad, who attended Crocker-Riverside Elementary School down the street and is now a working artist, said her mural had been a effort by various people during the COVID-19 pandemic, with businesses chipping in to help fund the project. She said the total cost was $40,000.
“The heartbreaking part is it was really a community project,” said Conrad, who is responsible for a number of prominent murals in Sacramento, including a painting of actress Saoirse Ronan from the film “Lady Bird.” Her other prominent works include murals honoring the Chinese builders of the transcontinental railroad and a mural of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Sacramento City Councilmember Phil Pluckebaum, who is a friend of Conrad’s and has assisted her on projects in the past, said he was “outraged” by the mural’s destruction.
“I just don’t understand the thinking personally to just blow away the kinds of investments that the folks have made before you get to a place like that,” Pluckebaum said.
He also hadn’t had advance notice of what would be happening.
“If anyone had reached out, it probably wouldn’t have happened,” Pluckebaum said.
Among those who took notice of the project back when it was being created was Kristina Rogers, president of the Land Park Community Association.
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“The mural will be sealed and should be around for decades to come. It is a hopeful statement about the resilience of our neighborhood and our spirits,” Rogers wrote on the association’s website in 2021. “As Maren said, ‘We are coming through a year of trauma, loss and isolation. This mural represents a new page for the community. And as a bonus, it’s a giant garden that doesn’t need watering!’”
The two-mural project was commissioned in honor of late local plant and wildlife photographer Jacquelyn Anderson by her husband Jim Anderson.
After learning from a Bee reporter on Wednesday morning that the mural had been painted over, Rogers noted that she’d been present for the grand opening of the mural and that she’d found it “beautiful.” But she stopped short of condemning Vic’s for painting over the mural.
“Vic’s can do what they want,” Rogers said. “That’s their property, so if they want to do something different, that’s completely up to them.”
She added, “I think it’s sad, but then they get to have their own vision of what they want to put on that wall.”
Janet Dawson offered similar thoughts as she stood in front of Vic’s.
“I do think it’s the owner’s prerogative to do what they want to do,” Dawson said. “But I hope they stay true to the spirit of it, do something to replace it. That would be nice.”
What happens next
In its Instagram post, Vic’s said that it was “excited to be working with a talented local artist on a beautiful new mural that will bring together the old and the new, celebrating both Vic’s and Brew Bird.”
Conrad said that she hoped whatever was created next would be a community effort.
“There’s a lot of people very upset that they … feel like they took something away from the community,” Conrad said. “And I hope they work with maybe another Land Park kid or somebody from the area on imagery that speaks to everyone.”
She also expressed a hope that there might be more notice in the future about potential removal of other murals.
“If you have to post in a window for a liquor license so the whole community can protest you getting a liquor license, maybe they should do the same for public art, like some kind of warning on a wall that says, ‘This piece of art is going to be removed if not notified otherwise,’ to give the community an avenue to speak out about it,” Conrad said.
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This story was originally published October 28, 2026 at 11:25 AM.