Oakland Tech has adorned a new vibrant, community driven mural on the walls of the Girls Gym as a part of the “Love Letter to Oakland” public art mural project.
Last May, Oakland Tech was announced to be a site for a new mural, bringing a new piece of art to the campus. The project was brought together and finished September 17 by muralist David Burke and his team, students and members of the Oakland Tech community to create a piece of art that reflects the legacy and future of Bulldogs.
The mural is a part of a larger initiative, the “Love Letter to Oakland” project. Created by David Burke in 2018, the “Love Letter” campaign thus far features four murals around Oakland including the new installation located on Tech. The project’s purpose is to shine a light on figures in Oakland who have trailblazed and impacted the cultural landscape of the city while paving the way for the next generation.
“It’s about celebrating the older generation,” said Burke, “but then showing that they see the younger generation and want to empower the youth to keep the tradition going.”
As a member of the art collective “Hungry Ghost,” Burke has been creating art around the Bay Area for years alongside his colleagues and fellow artists Pancho Pscador and Joevic Yeban who also worked on the Girls Gym mural and collaborate on the Love Letter initiative. Hungry Ghosts intention in having a representative piece of art on a school campus is rooted in their team having background in being educators with Pascador previously working at Melrose Leadership Academy, Burke, who taught at St. Elizabeth High School for ten years, and Yeban and Burke both currently being educators at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.
What makes this new piece of Oakland Tech pride special is not simply the fact that the art is dedicated to the school and its alumni, but Tech students having the opportunity to participate in the creation of this mural.
Last school year, the Hungry Ghost collective came to Oakland Tech admin and offered to paint a mural after they received funding in the form of a grant from the California Arts Council. After receiving student engagement in a Google form sent out to the student body asking where the proposed mural should be located and who should be on the mural, Burke and his team began their collaboration with Tech art students, as well as other interested students.
“We had Ms. Trockle’s art classes make designs and sketches they’d like to see in the mural,” Burke explained, “and then we took all those sketches back to our studio and we looked through them and we started to piece together different elements from different drawings from the students.”
Beyond adding color to the campus, the mural features Oakland Tech alumni going as far back to the ‘60s and ‘70s including filmmaker Frank Oz and the musical group The Pointer Sisters, but as well as more recent graduates such as star basketball player Jhai Johnson and Ahmed Muhammed, Oakland Tech’s first Black male valedictorian.
Other figures that the mural features are: Josh Johnson, Huey P. Newton, Rickey Henderson, Marshawn Lynch, Dr. Alexis Gray-Lawson, Akintunde Ahmad, and Bobo the Bulldog.
Though it is not possible to feature everyone on the mural, Burke hopes it brings Oakland Tech students a sense of pride and inspiration to continue the legacy of being a bulldog and paints the strength of Tech students in their actions during their time at Tech.
“You can’t paint everyone, but we’re gonna try.”