A mural project supported by UC Riverside is providing a burst of color and promoting a spirit of resiliency in downtown Riverside.
The campus is one of the co-sponsors of the Riverside Resiliency Mural. Mariam Lam, vice chancellor for diversity, equity, and inclusion, served as a member of Leadership Riverside, the group that commissioned the mural.
Painted on a wall of the back of Box theater, next to the historic Riverside Fox Theater, the mural by Riverside artist Darren Villegas will be unveiled at a March 31 ceremony. The mural is 65 feet high and 25 feet wide.
Leadership Riverside is a 10-month program by the Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce in which representatives from local businesses, government agencies, nonprofit groups, schools, and universities tackle regional issues and develop a project.
Lam is the latest campus representative to take part in the program. Her cohort began meeting in May 2020, shortly after the pandemic began. As a result, the issues the campus and greater community were dealing with in managing COVID-19 while continuing to function and survive resonated with the group, Lam said.
“All of us were so united in the theme of resiliency because it affected every aspect of our lives,” Lam said.
It also spoke to the region’s history of low funding for government services, such as healthcare and mental health funding, and Riverside historically overcoming those obstacles as it did with higher pollution levels in earlier decades, she said.
Lam also served as chair of the artist selection committee, which described its goal as depicting the “resiliency, vibrancy, history and innovation employed to navigate our world and community during the global pandemic.”
The committee received over a dozen submissions, but Lam described Villegas as “everyone’s favorite by a landslide.” Villegas has worked in the Inland region and San Francisco, painting around 60 murals that feature vivid colors and use of symmetry. His design depicts images of the city’s past, present, and future.
Villegas began painting the mural in November and completed it in early March, spending more than 320 hours and using about 350 cans of paint.
It incorporates a Chinese pavilion as homage to the Riverside’s old Chinatown; citrus groves that speak to the region’s agricultural history; and palm tree silhouettes. Circuit lines run across the mural to symbolize innovation while two dancers represent art.
The late Sam Huang, a Riverside City College professor who created several Riverside murals, is one of two prominent figures featured. The other figure is a nurse with a mask, as part of Villegas’ tribute to caregivers’ service during the pandemic.
“I wanted it to be really bright and vibrant and uplift people,” Villegas said.
