SACRAMENTO, Calif. — For over sixty years, the Second Avenue freeway underpass was a grey concrete reminder of the Sixties Freeway 99 building undertaking, which divided wealthier Curtis Park from Oak Park.
As occurred in lots of predominantly Black and brown neighborhoods within the Nineteen Fifties and Sixties, the freeway undertaking sliced by the world, exacerbating socioeconomic inequality.
“This underpass has at all times been a sort of a portal between the haves and the have-nots, “ stated Michael Stone, who lives a couple of yards from the underpass on the Curtis Park aspect of Second Avenue.
Right this moment, with cultural occasions just like the Sacramento Black Cowboy Pageant held in McClatchy Park and a wildly standard bakery with the foodie crowd, Oak Park is evolving. Nonetheless, the neighborhood struggles with crime and blight.
Stone and different residents say {that a} Caltrans program designed to enhance neighborhoods round freeways, particularly these with socioeconomic challenges, has introduced a ray of shade and hope.
The transformation of the as soon as bleak passageway started in August. One sizzling night, a gaggle of artists arrived with a projector, casting a picture onto one aspect of the underpass. Utilizing the projected picture as a information, they started portray an formidable mural.
The end result was a colourful sequence of pictures, starting from African Kente material designs to hovering Asian-inspired cranes to a semicircle of Native Individuals. José Lott, who led the undertaking and has painted murals in Sacramento for 40 years, masterminded the design.
“We wanted to capture the spirit of as many cultures that call this area home as we could,” Lott stated.
Together with Lott, artists Shonna McDaniels, Henry Fisk, Gustavo Reynoso, and Andy Cohen contributed to the mural.
“When I think about Oak Park, and I think about Curtis Park, I think about this freeway as a prime example of some communities that really were separated and had two very different outcomes over time,” stated Metropolis Councilwoman Catie Maple, who represents the neighborhood.
“What better way to celebrate and connect those communities through really beautiful art,” Maple stated at a ribbon reducing final week.
Many of the Second Avenue mural funding got here from Clear California, a $1.2 billion effort led by Caltrans to beautify public areas close to freeways throughout California. The Oak Park Neighborhood Affiliation hosted neighborhood engagement periods to get suggestions on the mural design. Sacramento’s Workplace of Arts and Tradition and the non-profit Sol Collective additionally supplied help.
Lott grew up within the California border city of Calexico, though it felt like Mexico to Lott. “I only remember hearing Spanish as a kid.”
Destiny introduced Lott to Sacramento in 1982, when he acquired a scholarship awarded to gifted offspring of farmworkers. He then studied studio artwork and graphic design at Sacramento State.
At Sac State, Lott cast an everlasting reference to the legendary muralist, poet, and founding father of an artist motion referred to as the Royal Chicano Air Drive, José Montoya.
Montoya based the artist collective to help Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Staff and to rejoice Mexican-Individuals’ Indigenous roots. The group was initially named the Insurgent Chicano Artwork Entrance. When some confused the artist group’s acronym, RCAF, with the Royal Canadian Air Drive, the title was humorously modified to the Royal Chicano Air Drive.
RCAF murals can nonetheless be present in Sacramento, together with one on the South Aspect Park bandshell, painted in 1977. Montoya created an iconic panel that includes Mexican revolutionary heroes Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata mingling on a road nook with modern Chicanos.
Many years later, it’s Lott mentoring mural artists by the Washington Neighborhood Heart, a neighborhood group that helps Chicano tradition and Artwork in Sacramento. “José is very gentle, but he is a fierce artist, and it’s an honor to learn from and to work with him,” stated Henry Fisk, who spent two months bringing the Second Avenue mural to life
Fisk, a UC Davis Studio artwork graduate who goes by the title “Fisko” in his work, referred to as the Second Avenue underpass mural undertaking a “dream come true.”
Fisk grew up in Oak Park and remembers passing beneath the underpass numerous occasions on his skateboard to go to his girlfriend Sophie, who lived in Curtis Park. They’re nonetheless collectively. “We’ve been together for 17 years. It’s gratifying and surreal to be a part of something so significant that will leave its mark for years to come.”
A recreation of peek-a-boo
One other close by mural additionally acquired help from a Clear California grant. Muralist Jaya King’s daring mural spans each side of the underpass on twenty first Avenue, bringing vivid shade to a neighborhood of tire retailers and Mexican grocery shops.
King drew inspiration for her undertaking by immersing herself within the North Metropolis Farms and South Oak Park neighborhoods, the place she attended neighborhood affiliation conferences and native church companies and visited native faculties.
The Sacramento-based muralist integrated close by faculty mascots and a vibrant orange monarch butterfly. A magenta oak tree represents Oakridge Elementary Faculty. There’s a dragon for Ethel Phillips Elementary. And a falcon represents Christian Brothers Excessive Faculty.
King painted two massive kids’s faces on both sides of the underpass.
“I wanted to connect with the two kids’ portraits across the street as if they’re playing peek-a-boo with each other. To me, this is an important element that can get the kids excited to get to go through the tunnel,” King stated in a web-based video.
The artist stated one of the gratifying elements of the undertaking was a neighborhood portray day in July 2023, when tons of of individuals helped paint.
She additionally stated it was inspiring to assemble concepts from the neighborhood. “When you get community feedback, it’s really like a firehose. I asked for the firehose.”
King stated that as a part of the “firehose” of concepts, she integrated the symbolic language of Russian embroidery into her mural, the significance of quilting in African American historical past, and complex Hmong-inspired designs.
Earlier than the freeway
Michael Stone, the closest neighbor to the Second Avenue mural, remembers the world earlier than the freeway was constructed within the early Sixties.
Stone grew up in Sacramento, joined the Navy, and traveled the world as an engineer on nuclear submarines. After touring the globe, he retired to his hometown and lives in what was as soon as his grandmother’s home.
As a boy, he remembers the freeway rising subsequent door to his grandmother’s residence, perpetually altering the neighborhood. Even earlier than the mural arrived, Stone noticed the necessity to enhance the world. With Caltrans’s permission, he planted a couple of fruit timber alongside the freeway embankment.
Stone acknowledges that the mural isn’t a magic bullet. Shortly after the undertaking was accomplished, two RVs pulled up alongside the mural wall and stayed for a number of weeks. A number of tents additionally popped up. Passing alongside the sidewalk turned difficult.
Town’s neighborhood response division satisfied the RVs to seek out one other place to park. “I think the area is heading in the right direction. The mural definitely helps.”
Mural artist Fisk believes bettering the neighborhood is a long-term course of. He has heard that further lighting to make the underpass extra inviting at night time is within the works.