Murals

Roundman’s Smokehouse commissioned and funded this mural. Their only request was for a compact design that represented our part of the coast.

Nicola chose the elements of a whale and a forest because they are two of her favorite things in the area. She was born in Scotland, but moved to the Bay Area as a teenager, and then up to Chico. She’s only sort of joking when she says she moved to Fort Bragg from Chico to get away from the sunshine. Mostly, she just missed living near a coast.

“As a kid in Scotland you can see whales off the coast, so it was pretty neat to come to the other side of the planet and see the same thing. The oceans are all quite  interconnected. I liked the idea of portraying the biological interconnectedness of these two adjacent but very different ecosystems, the oceans and the redwoods. In my experience living hee, it feels like the ocean and forest are on top of each other..”

From November to February, the California Gray Whales can be seen migrating south to Baja. There, the pregnant females give birth. Starting in February and March, the whales migrate back north to Alaska with their newborn calves.

There are lots of great places to watch whales, but my personal favorite is from the very tip of MacKerricher state park’s boardwalk out on the headlands.

Those white dots on the whale’s back are barnacles. There is one species of barnacle and three species of whale lice that live on the gray whale. The barnacle (Cryptolepas rhachianecti) is unique to the gray whale, and of the three species of whale lice (in the genus Cyamus), two are found only on gray whales.

Here’s some more about grey whales from our friends at the Noyo Center for Marine Science

Art Explorers, Inc. is a non-profit creative arts program in Fort Bragg, California, that serves adult artists with developmental disabilities and brain injuries. We currently have an enrollment of 36 students, including some who have been participating for over 20 years. We have a spacious studio and gallery in the downtown area, where we exhibit and sell artwork on an on-going basis. We operate a 5-day a week program. Our funding comes from the Redwood Coast Regional Center and donations from the public.

Art is a universal, non-verbal language, without definite rules or restrictions. Our mission is to provide a fun, artistically stimulating environment for creativity to thrive, where people with disabilities are welcomed and accepted as artists. We nurture each individual artist to follow their passion, to discover the right art materials, and to find their own unique style and voice. Our studio is an uplifting, magical place…creating art together gives people a sense of purpose, and promotes camaraderie. This helps to combat the isolation that’s inherently part of the lives of many. We believe that art transforms lives, and opens the window to the deepest expression and yearnings of the human spirit. For more information or to make a donation, please visit our website: www.artexplorers.org

If you are standing in front of these three murals, the Art Explorers studio is right across the street to your left, at 333 Franklin. They are open Tuesday- Saturdays 9:00 am to 3:00 pm. Go say hi and see what the artists are working on this week.

This is Jason’s vision of the COVID virus. Unlike the green blob with red dots, which can seem to connote malevolent stickiness, Jason depicts it as a passive cloud of, mechanical programming. Often our language around viruses can anthropomorphize them, as if they are “looking for a new host.” In truth, they are simple biological systems, passively transported to environments where they infect and replicate, or inhospitable locations where they are destroyed by the elements. In 2020, they loom over the landscape like the low clouds of an approaching storm.

The crocodile is a reference to the health alert levels of yellow, orange, red and purple that were used to communicate the rates of infection within Mendocino county. Like many of us, Jason distinctly remembers  watching with increasing alarm as we edged closer and closer into the purple zone.

Jason was inspired by mural fragments found in the ancient Mexican city of Teotihuacan. Check out the De Young’s incredible collection here.

Virus particulate drifts out of the crocodile’s mouth, curling towards flowers, abalone, starfish, California poppies, and a child in a mask, a reference to the phase of the pandemic when we hadn’t yet fully identified the virus’s methods of transmission or persistence on surfaces. Every footstep outside the house felt suffused with risk.

This alarmed creature with it’s head in a glass bell is a reference to the feeling of moon-suit sensory deprivation feeling you can get when walking around wearing a mask, glasses, and often earpods.

It’s also a direct reference to Heironymous Bosch’s famous tryptich The Garden of Earthly Delights, painted 1490-1500AD.
​As the daily fear and anxiety of 2020 gave way to pandemic exhaustion in 2021, many people tried to reestablish social connections through small group pods, with varying degrees of success.

Jason remembers feeling like one strange creature out of many, drifting across the landscape of Fort Bragg, greeting friends from inside a self-imposed bubble of personal space.

The bubonic plague or Black Death swept through Europe in waves of infection and re-infection between 1345 and 1353. Though Bosch’s famous work is a warning against sinfulness and lust, it was within the context of a society still reeling from a pandemic catastrophe which seemed to the people at the time to choose its victims at random. Many people then, like now, chose to confront the randomness by throwing caution to the wind and living for maximum pleasure.

When we first looked at this corrugated steel wall, we thought there was no way anyone could install any design that wasn’t geometric due to those vertical lines. But Nicola Beatts was undaunted. She is locally famous for her marine mammal artwork at locations such as the Noyo Center for Marine Sciences and the alleyway behind Roundman’s Smokehouse and she had a vision for this wall. Her proposal was a warm underwater sunset, with blue harbor seals pausing in their ocean frolics as if they are observing the viewer curiously, as bull kelp sways in the currents before a white mandala of solar radiation.

When she is not blowing us away with her mural talents Nicola is often found at Triangle Tattoo. Check our her instagram here…

Marta moved to the United States from Spain when she was 21 and eventually found her way to Mendocino  in 2001. Like many artists, she feels like her artistic journey is intrinsically tied to her journey in life. It’s a journey to find the courage to overcome all manner of insecurities and obstacles to be an artist. She found an inspiring mentor In 2014 when she took an oil painting class with Cynda Valley, a Willits artist at the time.  She describes the experience as “uniquely heart and soul opening.” Cynda taught her the technicalities of oil painting but also encouraged her to look at her art as part of her self, and extension of her being, and to confidently experiment and explore.  Marta clearly has a gift for drawing inspiration from the world, colors, shapes and patterns around herself. She is drawn to portraits, with  a strong connection through the eyes, rural settings, farm animals, old barns, bees, hearts and peeling walls and rusty elements, dreams and made up realities. Her current area of unexplored curiosity is assemblage of oil portraits and sparkling encaustic relief. 

​One in ten pollinating insects is on the verge of extinction, and a third of our bee and butterfly species are declining. We want to raise awareness through the power of art and honor thees pollinators. 

Did you know that Fort Bragg was the very first official Bee City USA in California? We couldn’t  bee prouder. 

If you’d like to know more about supporting pollinators and invertebrate conservation, I recommend you start by checking out Xerces Society. 

Derek had his eye on this wall for ages before he got the chance to cover it in minutely detailed sea life. 

As I considered how I was going to transform this wall I knew that I wanted to capture more than just the look of trees. I wanted to capture the experience, the awe that comes from gazing upwards in a thriving forest and seeing sunlight streaming through the branches. I wanted to capture the acid green backlit leaves, the welcoming quiet, the feeling of lushness and abundance. Nature is inspiring, both in a pristine state, but also in a state of recovery. I see great beauty and hopefulness in the process of re-growth, decade upon decade, century upon century. It was great to work with RFFI and learn more specifics about mixed-age forests and their work on behalf of our local forests and community. All of the trees, plants and details of this mural can be found in RFFI’s forests.” – Ryan Grossman

Sally had been dreaming of painting this triptych for years before everything fell into place with the Alleyway Art Project. She loved the rich and somewhat jumbled history of this neighborhood in Fort Bragg, with its many businesses, cultures, and local characters in constant flux over the years. The Little Cup and Larry Spring buildings are some of the oldest buildings in town – along with the Golden West Saloon.

Always a sucker for nostalgia, Sally delighted in depicting a chaotic and festive mashup of history from many time periods, lost treasures, found items, and as many references as she could fit.

Drifting across all three murals are Sally’s signature angels, often depicted holding orbs representing the spheres of the world, the heavens, all knowledge, and mystical interconnectedness.

What is this strange creature you see before you? In Jason’s words “It is something submerged, to reference the rich marine life of our coastal waters, but also fantastical.” The intense colors and details offer a dynamic and complicated response to the question the Grey Fox seems to pose. The shades and forms flow from the soft green bubbles at the edge of the two murals’ boundary, then sharpen and resolve as the viewer is drawn into the depths of Sub Rosa’s stylized realm. Design elements for the creature’s face and head reference stone carvings and mural fragment’s found in the ancient Mezoamerican city of Teotihuacan, famed for their bold contrasts and powerful structural elements. Upon this foundation, Jason layers rainbow fins, textured body segments, and marionette-like limbs, to create a whimsical mash-up with a personality all its own. Jason Godeke  is the art teacher at Fort Bragg Middle school. He is available for more mural projects. His dream is to design and install a large local mural with his students. Donate to the middle school art program. 

Sub Rosa literally means “under the rose” in New Latin. Since ancient times, the rose has often been associated with secrecy. In ancient mythology, Cupid gave a rose to Harpocrates, the god of silence, to keep him from telling about the indiscretions of Venus. Ceilings of dining rooms have been decorated with carvings of roses, reportedly to remind guests that what was said at the table should be kept confidential. Roses have also been placed over confessionals as a symbol of the confidentiality of confession. Sub rosa entered the English language in the 17th century, and even before then, people were using the English version, “under the rose.” Earlier still, unter der Rose was apparently used in Germany, where the phrase is thought to have originated.