Four San José State students are learning how to turn their passion and skill for art into a profession by learning more about murals at the heart of San José’s Japantown.
Every Saturday, the students meet at Empire Seven Studios’ art gallery and gift shop located on North Seventh Street to strategize about how they will turn their sketches into public art.
The internship, “Art is Power: The Business of Murals,” provides hands-on experience in mural creation, project management, community engagement and more, according to a webpage from SJSU.
The program is a collaboration between the Asian American Studies department, the Japanese American Museum of San José and Empire Seven Studios.
Yvonne Kwan, an assistant professor of Asian American Studies, was the one who developed the idea for the internship.
“Something that I really thought (of) as a missing part of a lot of our programs that we offer students on campus . . . is that I want to make sure that our students have the skills moving forward, getting out there,” Kwan said.
Students in the program also learn how to professionally network and engage in community-based projects to understand the social impact of public art, according to the same webpage from SJSU.
Juan Carlos De Araujo, the founder of Empire Seven Studios, is in charge of mentoring the students.
“I have initiative, and I’m self-determined,” Araujo said. “ ‘No’ has never really been an option for me … I believe that that’s why they reached out to me to be able to share with the students just a little bit about what we do.”
Students participating in the internship are also earning $1,000 as a stipend, according to the same webpage.
Araujo said the four students are currently working on their proposals that they can potentially pitch.
Tiffany Chou, a fifth-year animation and illustration student, is in the stages of strategizing how she is going to paint one of the walls at the Cupertino Library in Santa Clara County.
“I took a picture of the (wall), and I imported it online, digitally, and then I drew over it to try to thumbnail some initial sketches for mural ideas,” Chou said.
She said her goal for the mural is to beautify the space and to make it engaging for children.
The Cupertino Library has activities for visitors of all ages, including Storytime for Babies on Thursdays, according to its webpage.
Chou said she wants to paint a mural at the Cupertino Library because she grew up visiting the library as a child.
“It’s a space that I feel very comfortable in,” Chou said. “I know a lot of families around also use (it) as a community space to take their children to play, to hang out, for students to come and study, for older people to read and (to) enjoy their time.”
Cloud Tran, a third-year sculpture student who uses they/them pronouns, said they want to bring attention to Chinese food and cuisine through their mural.
“I spent a lot of time going to Chinese bakeries as a kid,” Tran said. “A lot of Chinese restaurants, people will see it as the lesser food group and I think that's just not fair because the food is so widely consumed by so many people, but it’s not thought of as pristine as Japanese food in a way.”
Tran said they are going to try to paint on a wall in San Francisco Chinatown, even though it will be difficult to find enough space to paint on.
San Francisco has around 450 artists who were involved in painting 1,000 publicly displayed murals, according to a website from SF Mural Arts.
Tran is still trying to find a wall to paint their own mural on, but they said they want to paint the Chinese food with a “cutesy” aesthetic.
“I take a lot of inspiration from nostalgia and cutesy dessert-core,” Tran said.
Beckett Van Leer, a fourth-year digital media art student who also uses they/them pronouns, has already chosen a wall to paint on. They plan to paint over a wall at YWCA Golden Gate Silicon Valley’s Linda Haskell Empowerment Center on Third Street.
“I think we should put something beautiful there ... put something more empowering and uplifting,” Van Leer said.
The YWCA Golden Gate Silicon Valley is a community support center that provides various services, including therapy, services for the LGBTQIA+ community, childcare, services for the unhoused community and more, according to its webpage.
Van Leer said they want to paint over the wall that has a “really terrifying bleached out poster that says, ‘Join us.’ ”
They said they also had no idea what the building was for before they started doing research.
“I honestly thought it was an apartment, because ‘Join us’ makes me think, ‘Pay rent. Come live here,’ ” Van Leer said.
Araujo said his goal is to share with the student his experience in not only producing public art, but also in learning how to take initiative and how to stay self-determined in the art business.
In California, around 2,570 people are employed as artists, making it the state with the highest number of employed artists in the U.S., according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“I can't express enough how many real institutions, like solidified institutions, reach out to you as a creative, as a small business owner, for unpaid work,” Araujo said. “It continues to happen, and it makes it really difficult to sustain as a business.”
On average, the hourly wage for artists in California is $54.81 and the average for annual earnings is $114,010, according to the same data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Tran said they think the school system is very bad at teaching students how to turn art into a profession.
“I definitely think the school system has failed us in that way, like just straight up,” Tran said.
Around 74% of art graduates are able to find work as professional artists after graduating from college, according to a report from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project.
Many arts graduates work multiple jobs and many are self-employed in project-based work, according to the same report.
Aljhecia Alolor, a sixth-year Asian American studies student, has seen a lot of their friends struggle to find jobs in art after graduating from SJSU.
“We've been learning definitely (an) emphasis on community in every space that we're in, and then leveraging the connections that we've made,” Alolor said.
In 2008, Araujo founded Empire Seven Studios. Before building his business, Araujo started as a graffiti artist in San Jose.
He said he remembers seeing a lot of murals being whitewashed as he was growing up in the city.
Araujo said his goal now is to not only teach the students the process of how to create a mural, but also how to engage with the community.
“This industry really does have opportunities,” Araujo said. “We just need to work really hard for (what) we need. We need to work harder because we're not privileged. We're not coming from –I don't have a trust fund and this is not my hobby– I don't have another job.”
