Wall-to-wall Art : Ventura County muralists seek ways to maintain and advance their medium and make significant contributions to their communities.

Local artists were inspired last month when Los Angeles muralist Frank Romero spoke at Oxnard’s Carnegie Art Museum at the opening of an exhibit of his work. During the discussion, he referred to his involvement with the Chicano muralist collective in L.A. known as “Los Four.”

Romero got the artists thinking: What about a group for Ventura County--one that would support muralists and their work?

One of those muralists, Jaime Estrada, didn’t need any prodding from Romero to recognize the importance of a Ventura County collective. He thinks it’s a necessity. “We need some kind of art think tank,” he said. “We need to try to get some artists together, not to compete against each other, but to help each other.”

Help each other do what?

According to local muralists, they need to help each other maintain and advance art that is available to everyone and that makes a significant contribution to the community. What that contribution is depends on the artist and the location of the art.

“Some murals are designed to educate, some are designed to carry a social message of sorts, some are designed to be decorative, some are designed as advertisements,” said Linda Taylor, the artist who restored the Ghirardelli ad on the side of the building across from the San Buenaventura Mission that once housed Peirano’s Grocery.

“Murals have different purposes, but I think when people see them they generally like what they see,” she said. “Even if it’s a social message they don’t agree with, it will involve them in sort of an inner intellectual dialogue.”

Taylor thinks her Ghirardelli mural, which she completed in the mid-1980s, gives viewers a sense of Ventura’s history. The original painting goes back to about 1910.

The mural at Ventura’s Livery Building on Palm Street, created by patients at the Turning Point Foundation mental health agency under the guidance of artists M.B. Hanrahan and Michelle Chapin, gives a glimpse into the past as well and a look at the present. Images are of the Mission, the pier, Chumash Indians and strawberry fields.

Some murals, instead of documenting their surroundings, are more expressions of the artists’ emotions.

One side of the new mural on El Roblar Drive in Meiners Oaks shows the label art that was slapped onto orange crates in the early 1900s. The other side consists of images of starving Somalian children, a burning building and other forms of tragedy.

“They are almost metaphors, symbols of today’s civil war and genocide, which are happening all over the world today,” said Karen K. Lewis, a member of the Ojai Studio Artists group that painted the mural. “Art can be all kinds of things. Art can be a reaction made by an artist and it’s not really completed until it has some sort of response by the viewer.”

Michael Mora has played a prominent role in the county’s mural life. His murals often tell stories of the community they are in. Probably the most well-known is the three-piece collaboration at the corner of 5th and A streets in Oxnard.

One section, titled “All My Relations,” pays tribute to different Native American tribes; another, “Let the Music Set You Free,” honors contemporary Latino artists; and the third, “Coyote Places the Stars,” is based on a Native American tale.

“If I pulled into a town and saw a mural like this, I would know that there are some active Chicanos and a strong Indian element,” he said. “If you’re going to do (a mural) in the barrio, you’re going to give it a heavily Mexican theme--red, white and green. . . . It’s pride in the community.”

Mora’s first public project, a pair of paintings he did with fellow muralist Manuel Unzueta, were completed at Ventura’s Westpark Community Center in 1981. When the artists finished, the paintings told a story of the community. That story was enhanced well after the artists were out of the picture.

One of the works, “Landmarks of the Avenue,” showed Johnny’s Mexican restaurant on Ventura Avenue. “We painted in a lowrider in front of Johnny’s,” Mora said. “A week later a guy going through the (police) academy turned it into a cop car.” Shortly thereafter, someone fired bullets into the wall.

“So here was this wall with holes in it,” Mora said. “That’s the way the community responded. Once we walk away, it’s theirs.”

Many of the mural projects in the county involve youth, and the murals often cover walls that are more accustomed to graffiti. There’s Chris Martinez’s work on Romona Street, Leeann Lidz’s project at the Ventura Community Center, and the recently completed work at the Fillmore Senior Center coordinated by Jaime Estrada.

Martinez had the help of about 100 gang youths in creating the mural titled “Nuestro Varrio-- Salve Los Ninos” (or “Our Neighborhood--Save the Children”). The mural, completed in June, depicts images associated with gang violence, including a gunman, a woman holding a child in her lap, and a Mexican death mask.

“It is a very strong message--that we have to protect our children,” Martinez said. “Sometimes with art you can make a statement.”

Lidz’s mural at Westpark Community Center had a different tone to it, but served the same purpose of cleaning a graffiti-plagued wall. The mural combines Mexican culture and heritage with environmental awareness. The 50 people who worked on the project all signed their names to it. “It’s a community project,” Lidz said.

She said that sense of community is even passed on to those who didn’t participate in creating the artwork. “This is something they get to see all the time,” she said. “There is a lot of pride in that, having something like a mural painted in your area.”

Estrada’s Fillmore project was a summer employment program involving 10 Latino teen-agers and artist Alma Lopez.

With the Fillmore mural complete, Estrada is set to begin another youth art project. He and Javier Gomez, founder-director of Oxnard’s Teatro Inlakech, expect to open a new cultural center on C Street in Oxnard by the end of the month. The program, partially funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Commission, will involve youths in mural projects and will train them in various art techniques--from commercial art to fine art.

Estrada said the center is a way of channeling the emotions that go into graffiti.

“I believe graffiti is a viable art form, but you have to do it in the right way. You can’t just throw it on walls everywhere. You have to get it on canvas, get it on paper,” he said. Young people “need some way for them to release what they feel.”

Along with the benefits to the youth it serves, Estrada’s Cultural Center could give a big boost to the county’s mural future. It’s a future that Estrada already thinks of as promising. “There’s a lot of nice walls,” he said, “that would be pretty nice pieces of canvas.”