SUPER HEROES.
A monumental community mural shaped by the dreams of West Oakland students — translated into public art by Javier Rocabado and a team of professional artists.
SEE THE
MURAL.
The scale, process, student-designed heroes and finished West Oakland mural.
CHILDREN IMAGINED
THE HEROES.
The Oakland Super Heroes Mural Project brought professional artists together with children and teens from the surrounding community to transform neglected freeway underpasses into places of imagination, identity and pride.
For the West Street mural, students from West Oakland Middle School developed superheroes in their art classes — characters shaped by their own dreams, concerns, cultures and hopes for the neighborhood. Javier met with the students, listened to the stories behind their characters and translated those ideas into a monumental composition designed to scale.
Javier then served as Lead Artist, directing a team of approximately fifteen artists as the design moved from drawings and classroom concepts onto a wall measuring roughly 240 feet long and 16 feet high.
The result was not simply a mural for young people. It was a mural built from their ideas. The children imagined the heroes; Javier and the artist team helped make those heroes monumental.
DESIGNING
AT SCALE.
Javier's involvement with the Super Heroes project extended across Murals #2 and #3. He created the design for Mural #2 and later became Lead Artist for Mural #3, the West Street mural.
On Mural #3, the students were the conceptual designers. Javier's role was to take their individual superheroes, narratives and visual ideas and resolve them into one coherent large-scale composition that could actually be executed across the underpass.
The professional artists worked from Javier's scaled design while he directed the painting process, managed the visual continuity of the work and helped keep a project of extraordinary physical scale on schedule and within budget.
One detail remained intensely personal within that enormous structure: every face in the mural was hand-painted by Javier.
Approximately 240 feet long by 16 feet tall — a public artwork built from many individual student stories.
WEST OAKLAND
MIDDLE SCHOOL.
The students' superheroes were rooted in the world around them. Emilio, a Mexican-American boy associated with the earth, uses music to spread joy, peace and love throughout Oakland. Gaza, a young Yemeni girl, uses the flowers on a magical dress to fight crime. Black American siblings Planteen and Solar use their powers to protect plants, clean water and energy.
These were not generic comic-book figures dropped into the neighborhood. They emerged from the students' own cultures, imaginations and ideas about what their community needed.
ATTITUDINAL
HEALING CONNECTION.
The mural was created in collaboration with Attitudinal Healing Connection of Oakland, the community organization that developed the Oakland Super Heroes Mural Project. Today the organization operates as the Center for ArtEsteem.
Its work uses art, creativity and education to help strengthen communities, empower young people and interrupt cycles of violence. Through the Super Heroes project, students were given a literal stake in public space: their own ideas became part of the visual identity of West Oakland.
ANTONIO
RAMOS.
On September 29, 2015, assistant artist Antonio Ramos was shot and killed while working on the West Street mural. Javier was nearby and witnessed the shooting.
The loss was devastating — and especially painful because the project itself had been created around youth, imagination, peace, healing and community.
The team returned to the wall and completed the project. Antonio's memory became part of the finished mural, transforming a public artwork about hope into a memorial as well.
“HE DONATED HIS TIME, HIS ENERGY, HIS TALENT.”
Javier Rocabado remembering Antonio Ramos.
