Artist Paints the Town--of 1910

The care that Juan G. Salas took in arranging his new delivery trucks 66 years ago hints that the Santa Paula grocer expected the 1932 photograph to last. Sure enough, the city is featuring Salas’ proud picture in the first mural of a public art program.

Over the next three years, the city plans to commission nine more murals for downtown buildings, with subjects drawn from the area’s history. When completed, the entire project--an effort to bolster civic pride and tourism--will cost about $150,000. It is the latest in a series of projects designed to revamp and beautify Santa Paula’s downtown.

A view west down Main Street circa 1910, along with a picture of Salas’ El Brillante market and two other scenes, will make up the first mural, being painted at the corner of Main and Mill streets.

Santa Monica artist Art Mortimer will work the next two months on the 18-by-71-foot mural, painted in acrylics on a store wall just around the corner from the Main Street block it depicts.

A planning committee for the mural project chose the first mural’s theme, and Mortimer toured Santa Paula and spent a day in its archives to find old photographs.

“Basically, the process for me is getting to know the community first,” Mortimer said.

This week, Mortimer laid out the 2,500-square grid that will guide his painting and outlined two images: one of a horse-drawn buggy, another of two men and two women on bicycles. The mural also features a multiracial school class from the turn of the century, the now-demolished Blanchard Memorial Library and the photo of El Brillante grocery store.

Looking at the photograph from his family’s 69-year-old market, Sam Salas reconstructed the scene. His father, in a white butcher’s coat and hat, proudly stands next to two employees and his two new delivery trucks. Salas’ late brother, Johnny, then 3 1/2, can be seen in the background.

Salas said he was surprised to see his family’s store included in the mural.

“I’m really anxious to see it,” he said. “To me, it’s like an honor.”

That pride is what the mural program hopes to foster in Santa Paula, said Joyce Carlson, president of the city’s Arts and Business Council and chairwoman of the planning committee.

“We think we have a rich heritage, and we just want to make something that will tell our story,” Carlson said. “My dream is that it will pull people together in a celebration of their heritage.”

The mural project is the latest step in Santa Paula’s ongoing face-lift, which includes building renovations, brick sidewalks, street signs and benches.

Santa Paula is not the first community to look to historical murals as a way to promote local pride and tourism. Chemainus, British Columbia, is often cited as the model for redevelopment through murals. Within California, Los Angeles, Twentynine Palms and Lompoc have all commissioned murals.

Mortimer just completed a mural in Twentynine Palms and has painted two in Lompoc. Locally, his work is displayed in Simi Valley at the corporate office of Countrywide Home Loans.

In Lompoc, more than 60 murals have gone up over the last nine years, said Denny Anderson, vice president of the Lompoc Valley Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau.

“From the inside out, there’s a lot of community pride that’s developed as a result of it,” Anderson said, adding that the murals are among the first things that Lompoc residents show their guests.

Lompoc now bills itself as “The City of Murals in the Valley of Flowers,” combining its public art program and its floral industry.

A 1996 trip to Chemainus, a lumber mill town that revived itself through murals and the tourists they attract, convinced Carlson that Santa Paula could do the same for its struggling downtown. Last summer, she went back to Chemainus with her husband and eight other Santa Paula residents.

“I didn’t see it [the mural project] as a panacea, but I did see it as a possible way to reestablish Santa Paula as a desirable place to live,” she said.

The planning committee has decided on several historical themes for the 10 murals: the prehistoric and Chumash period before 1769; the Mission, Rancho and Anglo-Mexican periods; the Americanization of the town; regional culture from the beginning of the century; and postwar suburbanization.

Events likely to appear on future murals include the beginnings of the agriculture industry in Santa Paula, the arrival of the railroad and World Wars I and II. The artist, subject and site for the next mural are still being decided, Carlson said.

Each mural costs about $15,000 for site preparation and the artist’s fee. Use of the walls will be granted by property owners.

To raise money for the mural project, the committee is soliciting donations from individuals, businesses and foundations and is selling limited-edition lithographs of the paintings.