Three garage doors at 20th and Dolores streets now sport the colorful artistic stylings of Sirron Norris, a muralist who has been active in the Mission for years and who also works on the animated TV series Bob’s Burgers.
The work was commissioned by the property owners, and comes with a message of multicultural coexistence, featuring a group of characters from different religious and ethnic backgrounds cruising through sunny San Francisco streets together, in one case in a cable car.
“Anything that I do, especially if it’s commissioned, I’m limited to how political and overt I can get,” said Norris.”I just try to be as subliminal as possible but also I think maybe speak to locals subliminally, people that kind of get it,” Norris said.
For him, art is a refuge from the political turmoil.
“When all this nastiness is coming around us, art is the only safe place that we have,” he said. “I feel like it’s the only lifesaver.”
The idea for the mural actually came right on the heels of the election. Norris said he and one of the property owners, who is a realtor, were at a career day event at the International High School the day after Trump’s victory.
“We walked in there, and it was all these professionals [and someone said] half of these kids came in crying today, you have to walk in there and prepare these kids for the future,” Norris remembered.
As he and others circulated, the realtor recognized his name tag and told him she had a garage door she would like to have painted.
At first, the couple who commissioned the piece wanted it to cover the entire detached garage – a bold move in a neighborhood, Norris thought, for a place where its striking palette and sensibility was grey minimalism.
“Everything was very conservative, grey, all this bland stuff. No one wants to take a risk, nobody wants to celebrate their architecture now,” he said. “I guess that shows the people that are purchasing these houses now and their non-risk-taking aesthetic.”
Still, he and the property owners eventually agreed that covering the whole garage structure might be a little overboard.
“Even though I have disagreement in terms of how everybody paints their house, I still feel like murals are a community thing and I do want the mural to accentuate the neighborhood,” he said.
And the passers-by were certainly diverse – Norris recalled having interactions (sometimes confrontations) with not just residents and tourists, but also at least one other artist and more than a few homeless individuals.
Overall, he said, “It was an awesome experience, it was nothing but positive.”
