Jet Martinez recently completed his largest mural yet on the side of the historic I. Magnin Building in Downtown Oakland. The one time department store is known for its unique green tiled facade. The building was recently renovated and converted into offices. Jet’s mural plays off the historic nature of the building, and works with the existing art deco style to make a valuable addition to the Downtown landmark.
Jet Martinez was born in Mexico, but now lives and works in Oakland. He studied at the San Francisco Art Institute and has been involved in countless projects there especially in the Mission District of the city. The floral patterns he has become increasingly known for are inspired by his Mexican heritage. The motifs come from Mexican folk art, Amante paintings, embroidery, pottery, and weaving. Jets paintings and murals have been shown extensively internationally in addition to his Bay Area presence. The project was completed with the building owners at HP Investors and Lake Merritt / Uptown Association BID. Stay tuned for more details on Jet’s upcoming solo exhibition at Athen B. Gallery in May 2017.
Revisit Jet Martinez x Athen B. Gallery Part One
The mural is located on 20th and Broadway in Downtown Oakland.
Mural Title: “There’s More to Green than Money”
For the last couple years, as my kids have started to become more independent, I have really been trying to focus on expanding my footprint by taking on travel projects and exhibiting with galleries outside of my area. This has been a fruitful exercise and I have been fortunate enough to be able to travel and exhibit broadly.
My background and true passion, however, is working within my community. As I have started expanding my circles I have also felt a real need to keep connected to the communities that have supported my efforts all along… specifically Oakland and San Francisco. It’s far more important to me to stay relevant and a participant where I live than to be a globetrotting artist.
With that in mind, I started this year with a self imposed mandate to focus on local projects and specifically to work on more projects in Oakland. I started voicing this desire and started reaching out to organizations that I thought were really moving the scene in Oakland. Oakland is a city that has a rather disorganized art scene, yet has some of the more raw, promising and interesting work being made in the Bay Area. Athen B gallery has poised itself on the line between the raw artistic underground of this city and the desire for a higher quality presentation. I was instantly attracted to this dynamic and reached out to them.
When this project came up, I was honestly a bit overwhelmed.
The I Magnin building for me has always been one of the most beautiful buildings in Oakland. A green tiled, art deco beauty, this building is a symbol of golden era from yesteryear. After the devastating effects of the Reagan drug wars and the crack epidemic, downtown Oakland became a shadow of the vibrant space it once was. Now, as downtown Oakland is experiencing a rebirth of sorts, I really felt a real responsibility to add to rather than subtract from this beautiful building and the downtown skyline.
This mural also had some technical issues that made it quite complicated. Primarily, that I couldn’t step back from the wall easily so that I could see what I was doing. I also couldn’t project the image and had to grid it out on the wall. This project was a real testament to trusting the process. It was a happy and unexpected result that everything worked out as it should.
The design I came up with was based on a series of works I’ve been working on for a few years. The original concept of the series was inspired by floral embroidery patterns from the state of Oaxaca in Mexico. Originally the series of work was intended to bring attention to the beautiful aspects of Mexican visual culture. As the series has evolved, I have started to use some of the floral elements to integrate beauty and patterning into architectural forms.
This piece was designed to integrate, rather than contrast with into existing green facade of the building. It was great to use an entirely green palette as green is a color that for me is sort of a background color. The color of leaves behind bright flowers. I learned a lot about using green on this project.
The roses in this composition symbolize organic natural growth while the lilies symbolize well being and a delicate beauty to be protected. The composition is meant to have an almost vibrating quality that for me, represents a higher natural state of being.
In a city that is experiencing a seismic shift of populations and economies, this piece is meant as a reminder to prioritize natural growth. As we bring in more construction and building, I hope this mural brings a reminder of the essentiality of Nature in our society.
It is also a way for me, as a man in society, to be able to contribute beauty and not just destruction. I think it’s really important in our time for men to embrace the making of beautiful spaces and I hope this achieves that goal." - Jet Martinez
