“Love Letters to Oakland” with Pancho Pescador
Written by Anabel Arista ‘27
The “Love Letters to Oakland” murals are a series of stunning artwork, spread throughout the city, that’s goal is to celebrate the unique spirit of Oakland. Azucena Rasilla claims in her article, “The Love Letter series, which will be a total of five murals spread across Oakland, depicts the act of the older generation ‘passing the torch’ to the younger generation they’ve inspired and influenced.”
Each mural features vibrant colors, intricate designs, and powerful messages that reflect the diversity of Oakland. There are three current murals out of five projected murals that will be spread out in various neighborhoods throughout the city. Love Letter to Oakland #1 is located on 4th and Oak, Love Letter to Oakland #2 is located on 51st Street and Shattuck, and Love Letter to Oakland #3 is located on Wattling and High St. Each mural adds a touch of beauty and inspiration to the cityscape.
Love Letter to Oakland #1
Love Letter to Oakland #1 is a stunning mural located on 4th and Oak, and was completed in 2018 as part of the Bay Area Mural Festival. It features a vibrant color palette and intricate patterns that come together to form a captivating representation of the city. Featured in this mural from left to right are Tureeda Mikell, James Gayles, Samuel Getachew, and Vanessa “Agana” Espinoza.
This mural also showcases an iconic landmark, the Oakland Tribune Tower. By observing the mural, you can take away from it that this action of the older man and woman giving this light to the young man and woman represents the torch being passed to the younger generation from the older one.
Love Letter to Oakland #2:
Love Letter to Oakland #2 is located on 51st St and Shattuck. The portraits of late Mills College Professor and artist Hung Liu and late Oakland Symphony conductor Micheal Morgan are depicted on the left, across from singer-songwriter and educator Kev Choice, and young muralists Marina Perez Wong and Elaine Chu of the Twin Wall Mural Co. This mural displays two iconic landmarks which are the Paramount Theater and Lake Merritt. In this mural, you can see the similar message that was shown in the first one (passing the torch from one generation to the other). The flowers are enlarged cherry blossoms which can be found all over Oakland, which I believe symbolize life and beauty. As in the first Love Letter mural, the artists are all looking towards the center light, symbolizing life force, passion, wisdom and hope for the future. The color scheme is different in this mural, with dark purples and blues. This is personally my favorite of the three murals because I appreciate how the artists connected the natural world to the artists in the painting.
Love Letter to Oakland #3:
Love Letter to Oakland #3 is located on Wattling and High St. The third mural extends on two walls and features the 90’s hip hop group from Oakland, Souls of Mischief. On the first side of the mural are rappers Tajai and Opio and on the second side of the mural are rappers Phesto and A-Plus. This mural is a little different from the other two because this one is representing hip hop and its culture rather than “passing the torch.” This mural was especially significant in that it was created in recognition of the 50th year of hip hop music in America. Themes in this mural include embracing music, art, nature, and love as healing forces and an antidote to community violence.
Interview with Artist and Muralist, Pancho Pescador (aka “peskador”)
I sat down with Chilean artist, muralist, and long-time family friend, Pancho Pescador aka “peskador” in his art studio on High Street in Oakland on March 24, 2024 to discuss the murals he had worked on in this series.
The first thing I asked Pancho was about him, how long he had been painting. He responded, “I did painting since I was a kid, since I have memory. In fact, my first memories as a kid…well, I liked drawing. In kindergarten, my mother took me to school to meet the teacher and when the teacher asked me to wait and gave me paper, I made a drawing and I remember the teacher saying, ‘Oh my god this is really good’ and kind of praising me and my work. That was the first time I realized I could actually do something so I always had a black book, a notebook where I was sketching. Then I moved to the countryside where I didn’t have electricity for almost five [or] six years so that’s when I really started painting and drawing because I was bored and so I started kind of doing it every day. So, it’s always been present. Now painting…I started right off [in] high school. My friend in tenth grade showed me an oil painting he did and I was like blown away! Like he blew my mind! I was like ‘What?! You paint?!’ And I was like I want to paint too! And he was like, ‘Yeah! Let’s paint, I have paint!’ He hooked me up with my first canvas and gave me oil paint and of course I didn’t know what I was doing, but I still painted something. That was kind of the beginning of the actual painting.”
I then dove into the questions about the Love Letters to Oakland. I asked, “Which mural was your favorite to work on?” He said, “I liked the ‘Souls of Mischief’ one just because it’s a little different. We had a plan, everything was planned, I mean we had a sketch, we worked on that sketch for a while, many revisions, but we felt like there was a lot of room to play, to be spontaneous, so that’s what we did. We also always thought about how some murals are always structured and there’s not a lot of room to really improvise. When it’s a commission, for example, and people are expecting something that is in the sketch you can have problems, so you stick to the original idea. But in this one, we were not presenting to anyone pretty much. We were just like ourselves so we took it like, as a musician would say, playing jazz. When you’re playing jazz you have like a structure, the melody, and from there everybody kind of plays their solo and improvises a little bit. That’s kind of what we did in this mural. The second mural in Temescal is a little closer to what the original sketch was, and we didn’t allow ourselves to really improvise that much. [In the 3rd mural] we were painting about that culture and it was the fifty year anniversary of hip hop so that was one of the reasons we chose to do that mural. ‘Souls of Mischief’ is a local band, a local hip hop group, from East Oakland and they had their headquarters in this neighborhood so this is like their place, their hood, and we wanted to honor them. So that’s the reason why this is one of my favorites because it has a little bit of improvisation and is very colorful and feels special.”
Afterwards, I asked how many people worked on the murals. Pancho replied, “Now, we are three. The first one, David, worked with a team that he assembled. Joevic is the one that’s been in three of them. Joevic Yeban, my partner here at the studio, is part of the project too. Right now in number two and number three it was three of us and then we invited our friend Pablo to collaborate with us. He is not part of the core group but we invited him to do a little something like touch up the wall or paint, things like that. The beautiful thing about the three of us is that we’re all so diverse and so different that it becomes a strength. Joevic is the master portrait artist, his portraits are hyperrealism. He’s a teacher in the art academy in San Francisco, he’s from the Philippines, and he brings all of that realism to the group. David is more like in charge of the concept.”
He then started talking about the concepts of the murals. Pancho shared, “The whole idea of this series, The Love Letters to Oakland, is David’s idea. We started based on conversations we were having about honoring artists when they were alive because most of the tributes that you see of people who are artists are when they died. We’re kind of tired of that. When the rappers pass it’s like boom, ten murals about them and then everybody’s kind of talking like ‘No, we want to honor people that are here, now, when they are alive and show love.’ That’s the concept of the Love Letter to Oakland.”
Pancho mentioned, “Now, things happen because in the process of painting the second one in Shattuck, two of those people died. Michael Morgan was one of them and Hyung Liu passed in the process while we were sketching the thing. We wanted to honor her in life but it ended up being in memoriam of her, but most of the subjects that we want to paint are alive.
“Also, the beauty of this project is that part of the team it’s a photographer. Steve Babuljak is kind of like behind the scenes because he isn’t one of the painters but he is the photographer taking all of the portraits. These portraits that we are painting are not like downloaded from google or pictures that are online you know. They [the subjects] come here and they pose and sit and meet us. We have a professional photographer with lighting and taking all these pictures, that’s why, for example, ‘Souls of Mischief’ they came here and they posed. Those were [in] the poses they chose to be. They said, ‘Yeah, I’m tired of that image of the rappers being tough. No I don’t want to be that, I want to break that stereotype, I want to be totally the opposite.’ So it’s beautiful because then you know they have a say in how they want to be portrayed and how they want to be seen,” he stated.
I asked, “What was the process of bringing the murals to life?” He explained, “The process was that we had already a pool of images of people that have been coming that we’ve been thinking of like musicians and artists…all aspects of Oakland life. So when we get a wall and we get some funding we think of where we want to focus, who we’re going to bring. The idea is not only honoring them when they’re alive but also the idea is like the old generation, the ‘OGs’, passing the torch to the new ones. So you see Micheal Morgan passing the torch to Kevin Choice because they’re musicians, like the older to the new generations, and then Hyung Liu to the twins which is Marina and Elene (they’re painters). Then you can see the same in [mural] number one with the poets. So we had this pool of images and then we decided for whatever wall we wanted to bring to create like a balance. Then, the sketch process started so we had several pictures to see which pose was better and then we met regularly to work on the sketch. We developed that and when the sketch was done, we set a date and we started painting.”
Pancho told me, “This project has been pretty much self produced. We haven’t had any big funding to pay for us. We got a little bit to cover basics, materials and stuff like that but really we are not making any money yet with it. So, it’s like a labor of love and we believe in the project. We have paint and sometimes we have time so we’re like, ‘Ok, do we just sit here watching TV or do we just paint a dope mural?’ The third one was a little different because this was more than passing the torch, this was more about hip hop. They’re all going to be a little different. And also when we did the opening [of the 3rd mural] the Souls of Mischief came with all of their families; their wives, their kids, their grandmas. Seeing themselves on the wall depicted in such a beautiful way, they got really emotional, it was really beautiful seeing them. Because also you think about the rappers that are like hardcore while they’re like breaking down and crying. It was so beautiful. It was a beautiful experience.”
I was very curious about how long it took to paint the murals with all the fine details and portraits so that’s what I asked next. He answered, “To be painted they all take about a month. It’s not working everyday because we all have schedules and things besides that so we find time and work whenever we can but when we are painting it we try to dedicate as much as we can just to finish it soon. So it’s about a month. Now the process to get it done is way longer. The sketch process, the design, the location, all of that takes time so it could be from six months to a year in total. The actual painting is about a month.”
I then asked “Why did you want to be a part of the ‘Love Letters to Oakland’?” Pancho replied, “Because I think it’s important to do. It’s a work that needed to be done because nobody was doing it and I really believe in honoring artists and people that contribute to society. The artists, community people, activists, teachers, they all need to be at different levels and positions in life and society needs to honor them. As I said before, I didn’t want to keep honoring dead people and I think that’s important too. I also really enjoy painting with these guys. From painting we became friends and the mural brings us closer because the more time we spend together, the designing, the researching…it’s like the friendship grows. Also, it’s just another excuse to be painting!”
My last question for Pancho was what impact he thought the murals have had on the community. He answered, “I think it’s huge because I hear people talking when we are painting it. During the process of painting it, people in the community like people that live in the neighborhood, people that work, commuting or passing by, they are like expressing what they see. Usually, I would say like 90% of the time, there’s super positive feedback. We get a lot of love and that’s beautiful because that’s the fuel to keep going. It’s like when a musician is playing music and nobody is applauding like Oh shoot…maybe I should stop playing! You know what I mean? It’s like sometimes we as artists need that feedback and it’s important. We’re in the right place and we’re doing it right like we are making people feel things. [People ask us] Oh who’s that guy? Who are these guys? Who’s that woman? So there is always an opportunity to expand the knowledge for everybody and it goes both ways because we learn too. When we go to a different community and we meet the people, [they tell us about the history of the neighborhood]. Oh, you know in this building back in the days blah blah blah. You know like it goes both ways. It’s never one way where we are just giving and not receiving anything.”
Conclusion
It was really interesting for me to talk to Pancho about his process of painting these incredible murals with his artist friends and learning about how the community has been impacted by the beautiful images they see of themselves up on a wall as a permanent fixture in their city of Oakland. I didn’t realize how meaningful and impactful murals could truly be until I got to hear Pancho’s point of view of art in the community. I left the experience of interviewing Pancho and observing these murals feeling grateful for the artists who work hard to create these outdoor museums that anyone can have access to and admire.
