A new mural will make its debut in Dogpatch on Tuesday, June 27, as part of the refurbishment of the Alive & Free Good Tidings Foundation community basketball court on Minnesota Street.
The Warriors Community Foundation, in collaboration with Good Tidings and the nearbyInstitute of Contemporary Art San Francisco, plans to unveil the court-surface mural by Los Angeles artist Patrick Martinez at a community event from 3 to 5 p.m.
The mural was inspired by Martinez’s “Pee-Chee” painting series, which references the classic school folders and their stripped-down figures. The work was done by Martinez in partnership with the Bay Area Mural Project. Martinez, whose work is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Museum of American History and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others, will be the subject of a solo exhibition at ICA SF this fall.
In an exclusive interview with The Chronicle, Martinez said when ICA SF approached him about creating an original piece of art outside the museum, he immediately thought of his Pee-Chee series as a fit for the basketball court.
“The art relates to schools; the original illustrations on the folders were athletes,” Martinez said. “Plus, the (horizontal) orientation of the series felt like a fit for the length of the court.”
Issues of police violence in communities of color have been a major focus of Martinez’s work since 2015. One of the challenges of translating the Pee-Chee series for a public space, he said, was determining how to speak to those themes while also offering a work that celebrated the community.
“I typically paint portraits of kids who have been murdered by police,” Martinez said. “I was thinking about the flip side of that, how many kids have benefited from Alive & Free and gone to college because of this program. As I looked at images of people who had been through the program, then it started clicking.”
The end result will include depictions of alumni of the program in some of the iconic athletic and academic poses on the original Pee-Chee folders.
“I didn’t just want to decorate the space,” Martinez said of the work. “Thankfully, the Warriors Community Foundation and the community itself gave me the space to make what I wanted.”
Martinez said creating the mural’s concept took about three weeks, while painting the actual mural has been roughly a four-week process. The renovation also included installing new base rock and asphalt, adding play lines and other repairs.
“I’m painting the mural with the kind of paint used on tennis courts — it has a coarse sand in it,” Martinez said of one of the challenges of working on the much-used surface. “It has a grit to it, this special kind of paint, and a very limited color palette, which actually is also of the original Pee-Chee folders, but it’s been an adjustment.” To evaluate the complete image in progress, Martinez and his team have used drones to see it from above.
In a press release, ICA SF director Ali Gass said the year-old museum “is committed to helping make the Bay Area a better place through contemporary art and culture, and this project is a tangible example of that commitment.”
Alive & Free was founded in 1987 by community leaders Joseph Marshall and Jack Jacqua to provide young people with greater opportunities and keep them free from violence. This is the third time the Warriors Foundation has helped refurbish the organization’s court, which is located on the same block of Minnesota Street as ICA SF.
“We are excited to share the dedication, brilliance and perseverance of our college graduates beautifully highlighted for the Dogpatch to see and celebrate as they use the court,” Marshall said in the release.
The dedication ceremony will begin at 3 p.m. Tuesday, at the court at 935 Minnesota St., and will be followed by a youth basketball clinic hosted by the Warriors Basketball Academy.
Reach Tony Bravo: tbravo@sfchronicle.com