(From left) Lou Dematteis, Mauricio Aviles and Daniel Galvez in front of the newly restored Carnaval Mural, during Thanksgiving morning, 2014. Photo S. Thollot

By Alexis Terrazas

Restoring 1,824 square feet of weather-beaten, chipped, 30-year-old mural—one one-inch paintbrush stroke at a time—requires a lot of time, patience and paint, and sweat, too.

“It was worth every darn bead of sweat off my brow,” said a grinning Daniel Galvez on Thanksgiving morning, as he watched the scaffolding, which had covered the House of Brakes auto repair shop on 24th and South Van Ness streets, reduced to a heap of planks and poles.

He had reason to grin. The Mission District’s famed Carnaval Mural—one that Galvez had originally help paint in 1983 and one that had been shielded by said scaffolding for the past three months—was now completely restored.

“It’s a reminder of what the Mission used to be about,” said Galvez, 61. “And just seeing that all come back again, be vibrant all over again and getting nothing but positive feedback, it warms my heart. And it reminds me that what I did 30 years ago is still relevant today.”

But today, that same neighborhood the mural has watched over for the last three decades is changing. Like the mural’s images and colors, the neighborhood’s local
businesses and affordable housing have begun to fade.

“Hearing people talk about it today, it’s even more relevant because of the changes that we’re talking about with the dot-com era taking away a lot of the affordable housing that was once here,” Galvez said. “But this is like remembrance, kind of an icon of what it once was, and hopefully what people want to keep. And that means still living here, which has become a difficult process.”

But getting the mural started—let alone restored—has likewise proven to be difficult.

A member of the original Carnaval committee in 1979, photographer and filmmaker Lou Dematteis photographed the city’s Carnaval celebrations from 1980-83.
Committee publicist Mauricio Aviles approved the idea of a mural and was charged with collecting Dematteis’ photos and handing them over to a team of muralists.
For six months Galvez, Keith Sklar, Dan Fontes, Jamie Morgan and Jan Shield—who was one of Galvez’s first painting instructors at Pacific University in Oregon—swayed from a swing stage until the mural proved complete.

Then, decades later, Aviles opened a newspaper.

“I didn’t know until there was an article in the newspaper that the mural needed to be redone,” chuckled Aviles. “And that Mauricio Aviles was responsible.”

In 2012, the original trio of Aviles, Galvez and Dematteis applied for the San Francisco Community Challenge Grant. Despite not landing the funding, they reapplied a year later and received $50,000 for the restoration. The project finally got underway when the building’s owner gave his consent. But that same owner had a question for the tall guy who was never seen without a camera dangling from his neck.

“It was kind of funny,” Dematteis said. “Cause he said, ‘What do you get out of this?’ And I said, ‘Well, man, I get these photos I took that I can share them with everyone on the side of this building. I really can’t ask for more.’”

Armed with one-inch and half-inch paintbrushes and eight assistants and volunteers to restore the 24-foot high and 76-foot wide mural, Galvez recruited Fontes, Morgan and Shield—three of the original four artists.

“It was actually pretty difficult … a lot of the information was gone. But enough of the design was still there, that we didn’t have to redraw everything,” said Galvez, who worked to restore the mural from Aug. 16 to Nov. 16. “But it was interesting because after 30 years, all of these painters were far more skilled than they were 30 years ago. Which helped tremendously.”

Galvez, Aviles and Dematteis officially celebrated the restoration on Sunday, Dec. 14 in front of the mural.
“It’s really a statement,” said Dematteis. “It’s saying, ‘Hey, we artists are here. The community is here. We’re not leaving.’ And it’s really lifted people’s spirits.”