The Mural “Carnaval”

The entire north wall of a residential building on South Van Ness Avenue is occupied by a large mural about the Latin American Mission District. The San Francisco Arts Commission commissioned it to bring together on one facade the neighborhood’s people, its shops, and the cultural institutions of 24th Street. The wall extends above the roof of an auto repair shop, and windows, cornices, and projections are painted onto it.

A woman in a silver costume reaches her hand across a break in the wall. This is Marlena Rosa Lima, a Brazilian dancer. The artist did not invent her pose: photographer Lou Dematteis photographed Marlena at the first Carnaval San Francisco in nineteen seventy-nine. About three hundred dancers and drummers then paraded around Precita Park. The mural on this corner depicts not an event that happened here, but that first celebration, brought here together with its participants.

Mauricio Aviles, Carnaval’s coordinator, pressed for the transfer: he wanted to turn Dematteis’s photographs into a city mural. In nineteen eighty-two, staff of the San Francisco Arts Commission commissioned artist Daniel Galvez to paint the north wall of a house on South Van Ness Avenue. They expected from him a portrait of the Latin American Mission District, where people from different countries lived. Carnaval suited this better than a general emblem: the people had already gathered together in the photographs.

Galvez chose real faces. In the red vest was city bus driver Jaime Aguilar, beside him was drummer Jorge Molina, and Marlena stood in the center. The artists added the businesses and cultural institutions of 24th Street. So the parade from Precita Park, on the wall, proceeded along this very commercial corridor.

For Galvez, this was one of his first major commissions. Thirteen thousand dollars was allocated for six months of work by the entire team. Access to the wall ran above the roof of an auto repair shop, which could not be damaged, so the artists climbed on a swaying suspended platform and trusted their safety to a knot in a rope. One participant stood up there for several minutes and left the project.

Even harder was adapting the composition to the three light wells that broke up the wall. Galvez first enlarged the image in a school auditorium, transferred the outlines onto paper, and then fastened the sheets to the facade. The team began at the top, traced the lines with chalk and a ballpoint pen, and worked their way down. The windows, cornices, and projections here are depicted in paint. For Marlena’s hand, the artists made a separate wooden insert above a light well: that is why the dancer extends beyond the plane of the facade.

Enamel paint proved poor protection from the sun. By the early two thousands, there were about half as many colors left. Aviles, who had once pressed for the mural’s creation, spent three years raising funds to save it. After two applications, the city allocated fifty thousand dollars, but residents and local businesses had to contribute a quarter of the sum in money or materials. Aviles brought Galvez and Dematteis back in; most of the original team joined them. In nineteen fourteen, the restored mural was unveiled again.

In January two thousand twenty-four, the city designated Carnaval its three hundred thirteenth landmark. Protection covered not the entire residential building, but the north wall with the mural and the configuration of its light wells. Marlena’s wooden hand, with which Galvez had once covered an awkward opening, is now part of the landmark’s legal description.