Ventura Historic Mural

A historian’s spreadsheet“And this row of tile plaques here represents the people who sponsored it — who funded the whole thing. This woman here, for example, is a very well-known historian, Cynthia Thompson, and she made me a spreadsheet. We had all of this in writing: location, buildings, people, time — and I followed that spreadsheet and started to draw. The drawing for this is 25 feet long. This is 50 feet long. It took a year. A very slow process of picking the people, getting imagery from the museum and from books, of what they looked like, and trying to represent them one person at a time, trying to fit them in, and make a composition that makes sense as a work of art as well as a story.”

The butterfly secret“If you want to hear something you might find funny — You see these monarch butterflies here? The reason they’re in those locations is that I made a mistake on the drawing. In all those spots they didn’t want to redo it, so I put a butterfly over the mistake. I’m telling my secrets, man.”

Building a wall to last“In the building next to the Mission, we would bring the tiles as they were made and lay them out. Some of the tiles got broken, so we had to redo those. The installation took about three months. You have to be very careful. The wall has to be made absolutely flat — reinforced more than most walls. Every block has rebar in it, and it goes down about six or seven feet, so it won’t move. If it moves in an earthquake, the whole thing moves. We had a team of construction guys — they were great — and we redid the whole sidewalk too. Then there were just four of us putting it up. We built a canopy over it so we could survive the sun. It was hard work.”

A thousand-year tile“The beauty of this is: whatever the weather, the tile we make will last a thousand years. If you go to Spain or Portugal, there are tile murals that have lasted 1,300 years. It’s the cuerda seca technique. You make the drawing — see the outline here? — with an oil-based wax, which is what they used back then. To make the tile, everything has to be a compartment. The teeth are a compartment, the hair’s a compartment, and this colour can’t go past that line. The line creates a dam. Everywhere you see the black line, it contains the glaze, and when it’s fired — it kind of mounds and makes a beautiful texture. It’s almost three-dimensional. It makes people feel good. It’s like having an artifact. An archaeologist could dig this up a thousand years from now, and it would still be like this. It’s fired at 2,150 degrees.”

The town’s own faces“All these people — they’re wonderful people who sponsored it. They were so generous. A lot of these people are alive and well today, and they love this thing. There’s a place called Tony’s Pizzeria down the street. He came here and started to cry when he saw it, because his dad’s on it. He was in the Second World War. A lot of people alive today have relatives here who have passed on, so it has an emotional connection to the people of the town.”

The ending he redrew“I changed the ending of the mural because of the Thomas Fire. I had about five feet already designed, and when the Thomas Fire hit, we had to change the whole ending. It could have burnt the town down. The town was saved by the firemen — and one of them died, so we put a memorial plaque there for Cory Iverson. This last part is new. I had to quickly redesign it, redraw it and make the ending: Ventura Strong. Thomas Fire, 2017. And the phoenix rising from the ashes. The fire department came to my studio to thank us. They were really moved that we honoured them.”

Michael O’Kelly, at the wall, September 2026. Lightly edited from an automatic transcript; to be checked by Michael.