A new 32-foot mural flanks the back side of the Tomales Bay Youth Center. Painted by some 50 students, the mural is an homage to their West Marin home—the way they see it. The project was a collaboration between Gallery Route One, West Marin Community Services and West Marin School, whose middle school students worked on it over the past two months.
Although the mural is a Point Reyes landscape, Kaya Rose, the 23-year-old graduate of the school who spearheaded the project, designed it without a lighthouse, whales or tule elk.
Sixth-grader Emma Giacomini explained that, “If you’re not from here, you won’t see Point Reyes like this. Only people in our community will be able to tell what anything means.”
Some of the mural’s hidden secrets include a bag of Toby’s oranges, “No Barking” signs, and flowers made of pizza, cookies, popovers and lollipops—a homage to Café Reyes, the Bovine Bakery, the Station House Café and Wells Fargo. As a nod to town businesses past and present, a chicken that represents Side Street Kitchen has a pinecone wing for the Pine Cone Diner that used to operate in the space. The students painted a cow in the school yard to recall the cow that kept breaking into the field behind the school last year.
Ms. Rose said the whole project was student-led. Using inspiration from a Heart Map Project that she worked on with middle school students last spring, she designed the mural like a giant coloring book so anyone at any skill level could participate.
“The Heart Map project was a visual aid, a map to all of their memories,” Ms. Rose said. “Starting with their home, branching out to their experience in Point Reyes, to events like Western Weekend and Path of Lights.”
When Ms. Rose began designing the mural, she had lots of conversations with kids and took notes about what was important to them. She drew sketches and they gave her feedback. “It’s all about them and their viewpoint, everything about growing up here,” she said.
Ms. Rose was raised in Point Reyes Station, studied at Pratt Institute and now works with Artstart, a Santa Rosa-based mural arts organization. She said she didn’t realize how important public art is until recently. “It’s a beautification of space,” she said. “It’s reclaiming space. It’s saying to them, ‘This is your space.’ In the spirit of that, we’re painting it for what we want to see, who we are and what our experience is here.”
Earlier this fall, a group of 11-year-olds leaned over the series of unfinished wooden panels, paintbrushes in hand. They were depicting, in acrylic, the hills, kayakers, flowers and cows that they love about West Marin. Lots of cows.
“I live on a ranch, so there are lots of cows,” Devin McIsaac explained.
Ms. Rose opened a jar of white paint. “We need more sailboats for sailing camp,” she said.
She opened another jar and handed it to Alofaluna Van Der Ryn. “Use this green color for the trees,” she instructed.
Carolina Mora explained that painting the green hills is relaxing, while Brenda Aparicio dabbed the pink face of a cow. “When we’re older, we’ll look back on this experience,” Brenda said.
The Tomales Bay Youth Center provides a variety of activities for students to engage in, from mountain biking and skateboarding to a D.J. program on KWMR. This year the center began offering tutoring for middle and high school students.
“We’re teaching kids how to ride a bike who never had the opportunity,” said Keith Fleming, the interim director of West Marin Community Services’ Youth Services Program. “Kids in a rural area don’t always have the same access to activities as kids in more populated areas. The center is a way for the kids to get off their screens and have healthy outdoor activities, whether it’s arts, sports or academics.”
He said the youth center intervenes during the critical 3 to 6 p.m. window when youth are more likely to experiment or misbehave after school, before their parents come home from work.
“We’re building social and emotional development through healthy interactions with their peers, diversity and inclusion events and drug and alcohol awareness events,” Mr. Fleming said. “This is a safe space for kids to come and engage in enriching activities. They’re not only enriching for their lives, but it’s also perhaps the best prevention strategy as a community for drug and alcohol use.”
Dolores Gonzalez, a retired West Marin School aide who now works as a substitute, said Ms. Rose is adept at engaging with the kids. “It’s really nice when the kids that grew up here then come back and work in the community,” she said.
Ms. Rose said she loves working with the middle-schoolers. At this age, she said, their eyes are wide open and aware, but they don’t have the angst of the teenage years yet.
As a preteen herself, she said she was interested in the same things as these kids. “I cared about pizza, cookies and weird jokes,” she said, smudging red paint with her fingers where the flowers would soon be painted on the hillside.