Chestnut-backed chickadees, yellow warblers and other feathered birds have landed this winter on otherwise-unassuming green utility boxes along South Van Ness Avenue and Bryant Street in the Mission.
These 20 feathered friends are the creation of Claudio Talavera-Ballón, a Mission-based Peruvian painter sponsored by the nonprofit Paint the Void to paint 10 Mission utility boxes, part of a project to remake 250 utility boxes across San Francisco.
It’s an effort to color the utility boxes that store infrastructure for nearby traffic lights across the city. Elsewhere, dozens of artists have covered the “municipal green” boxes with pandas, a girl on the swing, and a naughty astronaut.
Talavera-Ballón’s flock, all Bay Area species, can be seen at almost every intersection on South Van Ness between 14th and 22nd streets. In the last two months, they’ve become fixtures of the Mission.
Some birds visit their own portraits. When he started working on the tiny chestnut-backed chickadee at Bryant and 17th streets, Talavera-Ballón said, “I started seeing a lot of [chestnut-backed chickadees] in the Mission.”
He chose “the most colorful” birds to depict. It took him 10 eight-hour days to finish the renderings — sometimes longer, if he needed to erase and redraw the eye. The latter, he said, is the key to bringing a bird to life. “If you see the eyes of the bird, the birds are watching you,” said Talavera-Ballón.
The yellow warbler at the corner of South Van Ness and 22nd is a bird with yellow and black stripes that migrates between California and South America. When they were in town, they congregated in the large pomelo tree in Talavera-Ballón’s backyard.
And now, they are gone. “Somebody cut the tree,” he explained. Afterwards, the birds, which are important predators of pests, never returned to his backyard.
“Everything is in concern of extinction,” said Talavera-Ballón, who chose birds as his subject partly to raise awareness about the climate, pollution and animals.
Plus, “everybody likes birds,” he said.
Turns out he was right; the 20 birds got zero bad reviews, a rarity in San Francisco as far as anything goes.
He had an audience of onlookers while he painted. He remembered three little boys of nearly identical faces and different ages who watched him with their mouths open and their heads tilted to the side
When he worked on the utility box at South Van Ness and 14th, a young lady hugged him, cried like a child and thanked him over and over, said Talavera-Ballón. She said the bird — either a black phoebe or a western wood pewee — reminded her of her father, and she said, “You don’t know what the bird means to me.”
“This is my payment,” said Talavera-Ballón who, like other artists, receives $800 per utility box.
Talavera-Ballón, 50, has been an artist since childhood, when his mom constantly encouraged him to paint. He sometimes had to “choose between [drawing] materials and food;” he always chose the former. “Everybody can bring me food, but not everybody can bring me a crimson alizarin,” he said.
He’s also the creator of large-scale mural projects at 25th and Mission streets, the Salesforce Transit Center, and others in Redwood City and Oaxaca, Mexico.
The utility-box murals were intended to deter taggers. Two months into the completion, however, many of Talavera-Ballón’s birds have already been defaced with graffiti.
Still, he finds joy in painting them: “Give me all the boxes in the Mission.”
The paintings on the utility boxes are wonderful. I wish the artist well. It is sad, however, to see them defaced with graffiti. It is a repulsive insult and gesture of disrespect. Why do people do that? Just for the thrill of destroying someone else’s work? Regarding trees and habitat, I have experienced the same thing as the artist. There used to be so many trees, including several large, old ones in the backyards of my block. For years I enjoyed seeing a fantastic variety of birds that used those trees for shelter, a home, building nests, raising their families, and for food. I started to keep a list of all the species I saw. It was surprising! Ones that lived here year round, and also ones that were migrating. But then, one by one, the property owners cut down all the large trees and most of the smaller ones. The effect has been dramatic. Almost all the birds are gone. Why cut down all those trees? Why?
Thank you to the artist for his time and care for the beautiful birds on the utility boxes. It is very sad to see the graffiti thereafter. The area where I live has lost many birds due to trees cut. There are areas great for art like this and would brighten it up greatly if it would not just be defaced by disrespect. Thank you for story.
Sad to see these beautiful paintings defaced by tags.
Too bad some are already tagged. Can we not have pretty things, ever?
Sure you can. Keep them locked up in your local Walgreens. #breed
Thank you for the art! So sad to see the graffiti. What is it that leads too many to deface or damage the public space? What is it about this city’s culture that tolerates it? I can’t imagine it brings true joy and love to one’s heart when they deface something with their tag. What can we do to change this culture of selfish destruction?
I began birdwatching in San Francisco during the pandemic, and it opened my eyes to the beauty of these small wonders, as well as the incredible diversity of species that thrive in our dense urban environment. I placed a birdbath on my deck, which I clean and refill daily to prevent disease. It’s been amazing to witness the variety of feathered visitors—from house finches and goldfinches to Wilson’s warblers, California towhees, dark-eyed juncos, house sparrows, white-crowned sparrows, yellow warblers, Townsend’s warblers, and ring-necked doves. I’ve also spotted mourning doves, a variety of hawks, and even a Nuttall’s woodpecker. One of the most exciting moments was the rare visit of an orchard oriole.
I wish there were a program to educate the youth in the Mission about the diverse bird species that inhabit their neighborhoods. My hope is that these paintings will spark curiosity and inspire a deeper appreciation for the natural wonders that surround us and our shared responsibility to respect and live with all forms of life.