Mural of Ronnie Goodman at 1885 Mission: Conversation with Max Marttila
Mural of Ronnie Goodman (1960–2020) by Max Marttila, 1885 Mission Street, Mission district, from the series My Ancestors Followed Me Here, 2020; inkjet print; courtesy the artist; © Erina Alejo
Honoring the late Ronnie Goodman (1960–2020)
Artist note:
The Mission district is respected as a historically Latinx and immigrant neighborhood and the anti-displacement and cultural preservation expression of its murals, local artists, and grassroots organizations. One of the people involved in this community effort is Max Marttila, whom I came across painting a crow on the facade of the newly opened SF Chickenbox, a fried chicken restaurant at 819 Valencia Street. Valencia Street, while subtly different in economy and demographic to its parallel counterpart, Mission Street, shares the artistic expression displayed on its walls by artists like Max. Max tells me about his recently finished mural of the late Ronnie Goodman (1960–2020) at 15th and Mission, the former site of Impact Hub SF. The community focused coworking company housed various local nonprofits until their eviction from the building in January 2020. I spoke to Max in October of 2020 to ask him about his experience with the mural, his friendship with Ronnie, and his life as an artist.
Interview with Max Marttila conducted by Erina Alejo on October 25, 2020. Part of My Ancestors Followed Me Here, created for Bay Area Walls, a commission series initiated by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2020. This phone conversation with Max Marttila was transcribed by Erina Alejo and has been edited for clarity. A downloadable PDF of this transcript is available on SFMOMA. An excerpt is also published in the newspaper format of this project, designed by Jerlyn Jareunpoon Phillips. Photos by Alejo.
Mural of Ronnie Goodman at 1885 Mission: Conversation with Max Marttila
By Max Marttila and Erina Alejo
October 25, 2020
1885 Mission St., Mission District
Honoring Ronnie Goodman
A group of artists and I were contacted by the owners of the building at 15th and Mission right around the time Ronnie had passed, to create a mural in his memory. It was the appropriate time and space for this mural of Ronnie to be painted and to be seen by a lot of people. The rest of the mural is pretty loose—I had eight friends do graffiti pieces around the portrait of Ronnie painted on the building’s entrance in the building’s entrance. People came in and painted their letterings within a day. We practiced social distancing, so everyone worked on different days. The mural took three days using spray paint. A brush process would have taken months.
Ronnie wasn’t a graffiti artist, but he had love for all sorts of artistic crafts. His late son, Mire, was a graffiti writer. Ronnie was part of the Precita Eyes family. He painted with them before he was incarcerated at San Quentin and built relationships with everyone there throughout the ups and downs of his housing and studio situation. Precita Eyes helped sell prints of his and offered other forms of support when he needed it. Ronnie’s work is very political. You ought to look at his work. There is so much being written about him nowadays, but to get to know him, you can simply start by getting to know his work.
He was a real friend of mine. We talked about art, music, regular life stuff, and painting techniques. When Ronnie was alive, he asked me if I would paint him, as part of a series of portraits of people I was working on. So, I took a bunch of photos of him. As Ronnie was a figurative painter, he was easy to use as a model and understood how different lighting would affect poses. I was lucky enough to have some original photos of him to reference. He was like, “I want to get painted in this hat.” So I honored that request. He would come through in different outfits but was really feeling that old western outfit of the hat and red garment, like a Desperado kind of theme.
He’d tell me about growing up in the city. His experience was different. He had a lot to talk about: prison and his views on how the homeless should be taken care of in San Francisco. I was amazed by his resilience, his dedication to working, and how he was able to focus so much on working, even in his situation. Ronnie would show me work-in-progress pieces. I’d help him go through images on Google to find perfect references for an elephant. He was really consumed by his work. Despite living out on the street, all the tragedy he had been through, the death of his son, he could still focus on working, find ways to make money. He was a big inspiration.
Over time, people realized that he was one of the most important artists to come out of San Francisco. Ronnie was part of the Black community in San Francisco, whose population has dwindled over the years. He was a victim of the prison industrial complex. He’s not the only one in the city who was doing invaluable work and was underserved. There are other cats, too. He represented a lot of people, cultures, and populations.
When Ronnie died, he was living two blocks away from where the mural we painted in his memory stands now, on 16th and Capp, where he had built his own studio and painted murals and smaller pieces. There is a mural of him there, too.
Life and Death of Murals
A lot of businesses have been boarded up since the pandemic began. Murals have become opportunities to activate these storefronts. Some murals are painted on the wooden panels that cover the storefront doors and windows. I’m not sure which murals will stay after the businesses reopen. Our goal as muralists is usually to create work that lasts a long time. Yet there is also beauty in the work of temporary murals. The finite period also eases pressure on everyone, whether it’s six months, two months, one month, or less. My preference is for murals to stay awhile, especially brush murals. Other murals that are more urban in style aren’t meant to last as long, mostly due to the materials used. Not all murals need to last as long. The impact of their messages will have been felt regardless.
Part of my work with Precita Eyes is restoring murals. I’ve helped restore murals that are fifteen to twenty years old. This was my third time painting on the building at 1885 Mission. Precita Eyes has a good relationship with the building owner and Impact Hub, who rented space there. While I’m not sure what the owners’ political views are, we have been able to explore different topics on their walls. The first mural we did depicted a kneeling Colin Kaepernick with an anti-gentrification Robin Hood theme. I painted it with Dyzer1, a well-known old school graffiti artist from the city, who I grew up looking up to. I directed the second mural project through Precita Eyes’ Urban Youth Arts class, with assistance from Sami Schilf, Diego Irizarry, and Amber Ramirez. That forty-foot tall mural on the back side of the building is called Innovative Resistance.
This new request for a mural honoring Ronnie was for the building’s facade. Once the building is leased again, the murals might be power washed off. I have no idea how long it will be up, but I won’t be super torn up when it is gone. I’ve done murals for ten years. I’ve painted at least two hundred murals. I’m committed and addicted to the work, like many artists. I’m always onto moving onto the next one, pushing it. I see the value in fighting to keep certain murals, but I also understand how a city like San Francisco changes. It’s always changing.
The Impact of Murals
The strength in muralism as an art form is that it breaks down the hierarchy of the art world. You don’t have to go a museum or gallery to see the art—you’re already in it, out here in the streets. For the most part, murals are made for everyday people, especially communities from middle- and working-class backgrounds.
Nowadays, you can’t really go to a gallery or museum unless you schedule an appointment. I take the COVID stuff seriously and understand that galleries need to take precautions. The pandemic is horrible, but separate from that, it’s interesting to see how it’s affecting the art world. Are galleries still going to be relevant? If you have to schedule an appointment, that’s going to make galleries more exclusive and not accessible to the general public. It’s all up in the air. As artists try to navigate all this ambiguity, muralism has adapted to this reality pretty well. Murals, for the most part, are outside, not indoors. Organizations and businesses have used mural commissions as a way to support artists and engage community.
Murals along Mission and Valencia Street
There’s an obvious cultural difference between Valencia and Mission Street. On Valencia Street there are high-end boutique shops. Mission Street also has boutiques, but for the most part it serves the working class. The activity along Mission is different—it’s like the Wild West. There is also a little bit of a class difference. Time and gentrification have shaped these parallel streets differently.
But it’s not all black and white. There are trendy spots on Mission, too. And there’s SF Chickenbox along Valencia, which brings various communities in the district together. If you were to walk down both streets and take a tally of everything, you’d notice that the murals on Mission are more traditional in style. Along both streets is a lot of urban style art. There’s actually a lot of artists who have done murals on both streets, like Chris Gazaleh and me. There’s political work and also non-political work that is made just for the sake of beauty. Clarion Alley connects Valencia and Mission streets. It is primarily rooted in political work and successfully balances content and form.
Learning from the Pandemic and Uprisings for Justice
We’re still deep in the pandemic and have yet to come to the peak. Artists like myself are still trying to figure it out. Our effort to do so and to make murals at this time speaks to the community’s resilience and strength. We have different experiences and comfort levels for how we share our practices and projects publicly and privately. I’m a social person, but I also like working in solitude. There are artists who are making public art during this time, people who feel this art needs to be experienced. One way of doing this is through muralism.
At this time, I’m staying committed to the work and focused on what’s most important: the community connection fostered through art making. It’s not about putting the work on Instagram and being congratulated. Instagram isn’t the best place to discuss art. It brings forth a congratulatory atmosphere through public comments, but it’s truly limited in what it can do as a community platform.
Art making, experiencing art, and engaging in dialogue are all different in person, in a studio, and out on a storefront wall. I hope for the larger art world and the local art community to be able to be in deeper discourse with one another. Throughout this pandemic, and after, I hope we can find ways to continue to engage in art and make connections.
