Luther Burbank Center for the Arts Collaborating with Maria de Los Angeles on Two Exterior Murals for Its Santa Rosa Campus

Installation to be unveiled in late summer

Santa Rosa, Calif. June 27 – Luther Burbank Center for the Arts announced it is collaborating with renowned artist Maria de Los Angeles to install two large-scale murals as a gift to the North Bay community. The latest exhibit in LBC’s growing permanent visual arts collection, the murals will be installed on exterior walls at its Santa Rosa campus, making it available for free public viewing throughout the year.

Funded by private donations and sponsors, the mural project is the arts center’s second collaboration with De Los Angeles, who partnered with LBC in 2014 on some of its early arts camps.

“We are proud to collaborate with Maria de Los Angeles, a former long-time resident of Santa Rosa,” said Rick Nowlin, President and CEO. “Her striking, intricate, and colorful celebration of community, cultural diversity, and educational achievement reflect the values embedded in LBC’s commitment to the region, and her perspective on ideas of migration, belonging, and identity will have a lasting impact on Sonoma County’s cultural experience.”

LBC is commissioning the main mural to be installed by De Los Angeles at the north entrance of the Ruth Finley Person Theater. Anticipated to be 19’X19’ in scale, it will be a modern fresco process, using contemporary materials to create on a durable canvas as opposed to directly on the wall. Employing the working title, The Muses: A Celebration of a Blossoming Imagination, the work will celebrate the artistic spirit and, invoking the impressionists’ tradition, will be embedded with images highlighting the performing arts – music, dance, theater, speakers, and comedy.

Accompanying the major commission, a second mural, titled “Four Seasons: A Celebration of Community and Environmental Beauty,” will include a community component as part of the design. Taking inspiration from the LBC’s tagline, Connecting Our Community Through the Arts Across Schools, Homes, and Stages, up to 100 community participants will be invited to design elements that will be integrated into the painting. LBC will work with various partners involved in its existing community engagement network, including Latino Service Providers and Sonoma County Pride, to select participants who represent the uniqueness of the North Bay community.

Measuring 8 ft x 20 ft, the community mural will be in impressionist style and will be installed on an existing wall in LBC’s outdoor Sculpture Courtyard. Four Seasons as a theme provides a range of palettes from one side of the mural to the other and provides color environments for imagery and symbols to be incorporated. The mural’s content will fuse together participants’ creative ideas, as well as historical events and imagery referencing people who have contributed to the vibrancy of the region, both in the past and present day.

“I’m thrilled to be commissioned by Luther Burbank Center for the Arts to do this project and to collaborate on the community engagement component with their education team,” said de Los Angeles. “Public art and the significance of a mural are not just in the painting but in the act of bringing people together as part of a project. I’m grateful to the LBC for the opportunity to do both.”

Workshops to support community participants creating design elements will start in July. The murals are expected to be completed in mid-August.

An American artist focusing on drawing, painting, printmaking, and wearable sculptures, Maria de Los Angeles (@delosangelesart) was born in Mexico and raised in Sonoma County. She is the full-time Critic and Assistant Director of Painting and Printmaking at the Yale School of Art. De Los Angeles lives with her partner, artist Ryan Bonilla, in Jersey City, New Jersey, where she maintains a studio at Mana Contemporary.

About Luther Burbank Center for the Arts
A 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, Luther Burbank Center for the Arts is home to world-class performances, nationally recognized education programs, contemporary visual art, and many popular events. The Arts Center is located in the heart of the Sonoma wine country and ranked among California’s top performing arts presenters. Together with its resident companies, the Center presents more than 230 performances in music, dance, theater, renowned speakers, and comedy; provides education programs serving more than 50,000 children and adults; and hosts more than 1,000 community events a year. Owned and operated by the Luther Burbank Memorial Foundation, the Center relies on charitable community donations to achieve its mission – to enrich, educate, and entertain.