Mural located at Peninsula Station, an affordable housing development at 2901 El Camino Real, Hillsdale, CA.
Commissioned by MidPen, 2011.

The commission was to create artwork referring to the historic street that the building faces, El Camino Real, and to feature the nearby mission trail bell. At the same time, the purpose of the mural was to brighten the view from the building's community room and courtyard.

The mural is perpendicular to the street, and the painted bell faces traffic on El Camino, as they all do. The mustard flower painted around the bell is a common weed that has become almost a trademark in some parts of agricultural California. It was likely introduced by the first europeans traveling along that road.  Legend has it that the missionaries purposely spread mustard seeds along the way to mark the path in "royal gold" color.

Hence, the mural utilizes the invasive species metaphor to trace the path of the first europeans in California, from the South of Baja, to Sonoma in the North, along the mission trail.

The mustard seeds originate from the mission bell, and propagate into a 50 foot map of Baja and Northern California, laid on its side (north to the right.) Symbolically, the mustard seeds and all mustard/gold colored elements in the mural relate to the Spanish, and most red-colored elements relate to the indigenous. The map is painted in shades of burnt red, and a gold-colored path is literally etched into the land, crossing the fading names of the many indigenous peoples along the way, tracing the route of the mission trail from Loreto, Mexico, to Solano, now California usa.

Further to the right (further North along the map), the mural shows, in a landscape painting, the geographic position of the very location of Pen Station (and of the mural itself,) as well as its relative position along the mission trail, which is between the San Jose and the Dolores missions (pictured on either side of the landscape.) The full-colored contemporary landscape breaks from the duotone of the mural, as is represents our complex and multicolored reality made almost entirely of immigrants at various generation levels and from all over the world.

Near the center, a castilleja, a native red wildflower commonly known as indian paintbrush, brings the native land into the foreground. Further along, a falling red-tailed hawk feather floating over the San Jose mission is the mural's ending symbol of that El Camino Real history that didn't leave monuments or historic buildings to depict.

Special thanks to Nevada Merriman, Nick Kasimatis, Paz De La Calzada, and Dwaine at Pen Station.