Food Bank Mural-When a Building Becomes a Billboard
While a picture may be worth a thousand words, the Merced County Food Bank hopes a mural along the west side of their warehouse is worth a few moments of our time to think about the issue of hunger.
The new mural on the west side of the Merced County Food Bank warehouse. Photo by Steve Newvine
The mural is being seen by hundreds of drivers passing by daily along highway 59 at Olive Avenue in Merced. The mural’s message is summed up by the three words to the far right end of the warehouse wall: help fight hunger.
Over the past few weeks a local artist has been painting the mural. The artist is Ramon Valencia who works for a design firm called The Mariposa Art Company. The Company does a variety of original artwork on buildings, along with other graphic design services for businesses including business cards, t-shirts, and banners.
The idea for painting a mural on the side of the building came after Food Bank board members saw a wall mural at the local United Way office in Merced. Some inquiries were made. The Food Bank board was pleasantly surprised with the opportunity presented by the Mariposa Art Company.
Food Bank Executive Director Bill Gibbs says the Mariposa Art Company is donating a lot of its time and resources to the project. In addition to Ramon’s and an assistant’s time, more than three-thousand dollars in paint has been donated by the company.
The use of an industrial lift being used on the project was donated by United Rentals. The Food Bank will spend approximately $1,500 as its share of the total cost.
It is estimated a mural of this size would cost between ten and fifteen-thousand dollars if the labor and materials were not donated.
“The cost to the Food Bank is worth it to raise awareness about hunger,” Bill Gibbs says. “I can’t tell you how many times people or donors have told us they didn’t know there was a food bank in Merced County.”
The work of artist Ramon Valencia is now part of the Merced County Food Bank warehouse. Photo by Steve Newvine
The mural depicts the valley’s deep agricultural heritage
The bottom half is solid brown representing the soil (and hopefully a hedge to a quick paint-over in the event of a graffiti attack). It shows a wagon or trailer filled with crates of fruits and vegetables. Farm fields, a bright blue sky, and the mighty sun fill out the rest of the mural.
The project has taken the better part of July to complete. The biggest challenge so far has been the heat. “Ramon told me our extreme temperatures are even hotter against the side of the building,” Bill says. “Some days, the paint dries as soon as it’s applied making the blending of colors a challenge.”
Ramon manages that challenge by doing some of his work in the early morning or early evening hours.
Over 17,000 people served
The Food Bank acquires, stores, and distributes food for one-hundred non-profit groups in Mariposa and Merced Counties.
More than five-and-a-half million pounds of food passes through the Olive Avenue warehouse in a year. Every month, seventeen thousand people are served by this organization and associated non-profit groups that are part of the Food Bank network.
Volunteers help sort and move much of the food that comes into the warehouse. The volunteers augment the regular staff making sure the food is readily available to meet the need in the two counties.
The mural’s message: help fight hunger. Photo by Steve Newvine
So the message is now clearer than ever at the far right of the mural on the west side of the Food Bank warehouse.
Three simple words make the case for raising awareness and supporting initiatives that help those in need of food: help fight hunger.
The new Food Bank website address is MMCFB.org
The Central Valley’s Part in Tony Bennett’s Legacy
Tony Bennett turns ninety this summer. While fans around the world will remember him for the song about San Francisco, the Central Valley played a small, yet significant role the singer’s career.
Tony Bennett’s enduring music catalog. Photo by Steve Newvine
Elvis liked his style. Sinatra called him his favorite singer. It has been a remarkable career for the singer whose first records were made in the early 1950s.
Through the years, music formats changed. But Tony never really changed. Sticking to popular tunes better known as the Great American Songbook, he kept plugging along. Through good times and bad, he was around, “picking up the pieces” as he sings from an early hit, making music.
He was the first musical guest on the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson on October 1, 1962. He performed his newest single on that program. The tune, I Left My Heart in San Francisco, would become his signature song.
To me, the song is more than just a tribute to that “City by the Bay” as the song lyrics go. The song connects with the desire many of us have to go home. No matter where we end up in life, we’d like to think that home is always welcoming us back.
Tony once told an interviewer that U.S. soldiers in the Vietnam War would see the Golden Gate Bridge upon their return from the service. Invariably, someone would break out in song singing I Left My Heart in San Francisco.
As my uncle served in Vietnam, I’d like to think he and his fellow returning soldiers did the same thing upon their return to the states.
My journey as a Tony Bennett fan began in the mid-1970s when he was a frequent guest on the Tonight Show.
Johnny Carson preferred to have pop music artists of the Tony Bennett/Steve Lawrence genre. I was a teenager preferring rock-and-roll, but I liked Carson.
So I figured if Johnny favored these artists, they must be good. I was a Tony Bennett fan long before it was fashionable.
I realize now that the 1970s was possibly the most trying years of his career. At times during that decade he was addicted to drugs, his long time record label Columbia dropped him, and he toiled away in less popular venues before smaller crowds.
I remember seeing a picture of him taken from that time at a Rochester, New York area restaurant. The owner saw me admiring the photograph in the early 1990s. He pointed to himself standing alongside Tony in that picture.
He told me the photo was taken after a performance in western New York. The man shared with me how he saw the singer again twenty-years later and asked Tony whether he remembered that particular performance.
Tony told him “I don’t remember much of what happened in the seventies."
Life is Beautiful album by Tony Bennett
The first Tony Bennett record I bought was a long-playing 33 RPM called Life is Beautiful on the obscure Improv label. The album was made in the seventies; I found it brand new in a clearance bin at a big box store. The songs were well done. The title song was written by Fred Astaire.
In the 1980s, Tony kept plugging along and my only connection to him was through his frequent appearances on the Carson show. Toward the end of the decade, he would turn to his son Danny to manage his career. That’s when the new Tony Bennett emerged.
Danny was able to restore his dad’s recording contract with Columbia. He booked his father with some younger acts such as the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
He also got his dad featured in an hour-long MTV episode of the Unplugged series. That appearance featured duets with K.D. Lang and Elvis Costello. The live concert CD release captured the excitement of that evening and is credited with moving Tony to a new fan base.
In May 1992, Tony appeared on the last week of the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Tony sang two songs. One was Johnny’s favorite, I’ll be Seeing You. The other was I Left My Heart in San Francisco.
Mementos from Tony Bennett’s concert at the William Sayoran Theater in Fresno in 2004. Photo from the Newvine Personal Collection
And now to how the Central Valley played a small role in the legacy of Tony Bennett.
I saw Tony perform in Fresno in 2004. I recognized every song but one. That particular composition, All for You, he explained to the audience at the William Sayoran Theater, was a new song in which he tried his hand at writing lyrics. He performed it for the very first time on stage that night in Fresno. In his second autobiography Life is a Gift, he wrote of singing the song on stage that night in Fresno. “I was bowled over by their (the audience) reaction” he wrote. “They went crazy for it.”
The words for All for You were the only song lyrics he ever wrote.
I’d like to think I led the enthusiastic applause when he performed that song on that night. I know I was the most enthusiastic fan in the theater as he performed I Left My Heart in San Francisco.
I’ve already begun celebrating Tony’s ninetieth by playing his music daily. The music has endured, his interpretations continue to layer over the many songs in his catalog.
He is a class act. Happy Birthday Tony!
Steve Newvine lives in Merced
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