By Ellie Appleby

Sacramento City College received a painted array of vibrant colors on the Fischbacher Fine Arts Building during the month of May thanks to art students in a mural class, and from the continued advocacy of its professor.

Two murals were created: The first shows art tools painted on the front of the building to help promote the Art Department; the second depicts the college’s panther mascot and is painted on the backside of the building to represent school spirit.

It took some convincing for City College administrators and facility managers to give permission and allow the art class to paint murals for the first time on the building, according to Prof. Gioia Fonda.

“These are the staff members that have to keep our campus looking nice, and so they had concerns, like ‘How are we going to maintain the murals? Will the paint go bad after a while? And will the murals keep our campus looking professional?’” Fonda said. 

Fonda said she listened to these concerns and reassured administrators that the murals would be well cared for, appropriate and uplifting — and they were eventually approved.

Fonda has been teaching the mural class for the last two years. As an artist herself, she had the right skills to put the class together. She also said that being able to create murals presents potential paid opportunities for local artists in a city where murals have come to dominate our landscape, partly a result of the work of the nonprofit Wide Open Walls, which has held mural festivals since 2017. (It has also been subject to recent controversy.)

“I really care about how murals come about in our community, and I wanted to help our students navigate that with as much information and grace as possible,” Fonda said.

Art Student Megan Bernards signed up for the mural class because she had never attended a college with this sort of opportunity.  

“The project sucked you in and it became more involved than you realized,” Bernards said. “The teacher was able to facilitate different responsibilities depending on the individual’s skill sets, which helped spread the load out, and allowed us to work as a collaborated team.” 

Former retired attorney Jennifer Tachera, who has taken art classes at all four Los Rios Community College District campuses, said she was impressed with the mural class.“A lot of art making is very solitary, so it was rewarding to be a part of this group that fostered creativity together,” Tachera said.

The class consisted of adult students of all different ages — including some just out of high school and those well into retirement. They learned how to create sketches intended for the mural imagery, how to transfer a sketch to a wall, traditional grid methods and projection.

“This is a way to build an artist portfolio,” Fonda said. “It will give students an opportunity to go out into the community and give them leverage to paint a mural for a local business, private resident, or even a local school.”

This story was funded by the City of Sacramento’s Arts and Creative Economy Journalism Grant to Solving Sacramento. Following our journalism code of ethics and protocols, the city had no editorial influence over this story and no city official reviewed this story before it was published. Our partners include California Groundbreakers, Capital Public Radio, Outword, Russian America Media, Sacramento Business Journal, Sacramento News & Review, Sacramento Observer and Univision 19.