Blanca Molina sits in Tía María bakery in Santa Rosa’s Roseland neighborhood, studying her latest project on her iPad. At a table behind her, two women chat over cups of coffee, their conversation framed by a bright pink backdrop adorned with pops of orange florals and a bouquet of conchas sprouting from a café de olla that reads, “May your cafecitos be strong and your chisme be juicy.”
“Chisme means gossip,” explains Molina of the mural she created for the bakery this spring — one that might make you ponder: Does life imitate art, or does art imitate life?
For Molina, that philosophical question matters less than creating something that brings a smile to someone’s face. “Spreading joy and happiness with my art has always been my number one goal,” she says.
And she succeeds. Her creations are vibrant, bold, and lush. Describing herself as a “Latina maximalist,” Molina embraces a “more is more” approach. “I always want to add more pops of color, more movement. Make it busy, but clean. Organized chaos, I guess,” she explains.
At its core, Molina’s art represents a yearning to capture the life her family left behind when they immigrated to California from Jalisco, Mexico, when she was 5 years old. “I kind of missed out on my culture by not being over there, so the only way I could connect to it is by drawing things that are important to the Mexican culture,” she says.
Molina is especially drawn to pink and orange hues, colors significant to Día de los Muertos, which also happens to be her busiest time of year. She recently completed a Día de los Muertos project for Lush Cosmetics, creating packaging that will be released this autumn.
The imagery of sugar skulls and brujas (witches) — inspired by the holiday — features prominently in her artwork and has brought her considerable attention. But her work also incorporates American influences. “I grew up here, so I do use a lot of Spanglish,” she says of her designs.
After her family settled in Napa, Molina, her parents, and her two siblings moved to a property in Alexander Valley where her father managed a vineyard. She worked at the nearby Jimtown Store during college and credits the store’s owner at the time, Carrie Brown, with influencing her artistic approach. “She’s very colorful in her way of putting foods together. It influenced my art down the line,” Molina recalls.
A career graphic designer, Molina learned early on, while a student at Healdsburg High School, that creativity can be a powerful tool for tackling tough topics. “Sometimes, the topics weren’t even that interesting to me, but I knew I had to do a poster and the poster made me more excited about it.” Some teachers even complimented her ability to make “boring” subjects more engaging.
Even now, with her use of vivid colors and joyful artwork, she manages to broach subjects like immigration, feminism, and self-actualization with a sense of humor — albeit with a subversive spin, but only in the nicest way possible. “I don’t like to say negative things, I like to spread positivity,” she says of her images with messages like “The immigration community is beautiful” and “The future is female.”
Molina’s message of joy and positivity flourishes for all to see in her artwork. Her murals, largely concentrated in the Roseland neighborhood, are public-facing art. In addition to the one at Tía María, another at nearby HenHouse Brewing reads, “con cerveza, no hay tristeza.” Molina says, “It sounds better in Spanish,” but translates it roughly to “with beer, there is no sadness.”
Her first design, “vivir y disfrutar,” painted in 2022 on the side of Sazón Peruvian restaurant, means simply to “live and enjoy life” — a reminder, perhaps, to the sometimes harried drivers on busy Sebastopol Road to slow down and take it easy.
Her newest mural design, debuting this summer, is mobile — a bus in Napa Valley will be fully wrapped in her artwork, incorporating, among other things, vineyards, a vineyard worker, and a woman holding a glass of wine on one side. On the other, orange poppies and the California bear appear — in this iteration, with a pair of monarch butterfly wings. (The bear on the California flag was inspired by a bear named “Monarch,” one of the last California grizzlies in captivity.)
Although all her murals are impressive, none are so precious as to be tucked away in an intimidating gallery or hushed museum. The medium is the message: This is art for everybody.
The mural in Molina’s new hometown, Cloverdale, which was unveiled last year, was a turning point for how she approaches projects. Through a series of meetings organized with Kimzin Creative, community members gave input about meaningful images to include. The themes they selected were incorporated into letters that spell out “Cloverdale” for a 60-foot mural on the side of the Encore Dance Theater on Cloverdale Boulevard.
To create a mural, Molina photographs the wall, then uses its exact dimensions for her design. In her home office, she creates a digital image on a computer with a giant screen that allows her to easily see her more detailed work.
When it’s time to turn virtual into reality, she uses a laptop to project the outline of her design onto the wall, then traces it, quickly, sometimes in chalk, sometimes with paint. For large projects, like the Cloverdale mural, she projects a quadrant at a time, carefully piecing it together.
When it came time to paint the Cloverdale mural, the community got to help — a first for Molina. She describes her work as a “very color-by-numbers kind of style,” which helps on projects where people bring varying degrees of artistic experience or, perhaps, none at all. But just because it’s easy to paint, it doesn’t mean it’s easy to design.
Creating the template, she says, is where the real work lies. “Coming up with something that other people can do, that’s where it gets tricky.” But for her, the work is worth it because that collaboration allows people to experience a deeper connection to the art. “People would go to the flower they painted, and they’ll show their family, ‘Oh, I painted that flower.’”
Now, when a business or organization asks her to create a mural, she encourages them to consider involving others. “If you bring customers in (to help), they’ll become even more loyal customers,” she says. “It’s just a beautiful feeling. It brings more positivity to that business.”
Living so close to the Cloverdale mural, Molina finds a lot of satisfaction seeing people — including city council members — take photos in front of it. “It’s like a warm hug.”
Find Molina’s murals, along with murals from other local artists, scattered all around Sonoma County.