Marine veteran Phillip Ray Orabuena once ran security convoys from 2004-2007 in Fallujah, Iraq. Today, you can see him most days with paint brushes in hand, as he works on his latest mural on the backside of the Veterans Memorial Building. A self-taught artist, he started painting murals while still in the military.
“When I came home I started painting murals here,” he said. “With this project, I was approached by the Arts Council and we went in on a grant proposal and it just went from there.”
Orabuena estimated that the mural will take him 30 to 40 hours, spread over a couple months because of the storms that have repeatedly interrupted his work. He said he is hoping to be done by April.
“This month, we’re going to wrap up the mural and next month I’m going to be putting on (military) seals for each branch of service and the P.O.W. (prisoner of war) flag at the bottom of it,” he said. “I’m going to be putting on a clear sealant that is supposed to be graffiti resistant, so we’ll see how it goes. There have been a couple of my murals that have been graffiti-ed and I went out and fixed them. If that happens here, I’ll just fix it.”
Ray Friend, city councilman and commander of American Legion Post 69, along with Bernie Ramirez, commander of Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 9242, and several other members of each service organization met with Orabuena last summer to discuss the project and eventually approve it.
“We brainstormed with him and came up with a conceptual design,” Friend said. “Then it went through general meetings of the VFW and American Legion to get approval from everybody. Once we went through the approval process and Jennifer (Laine, the executive director of the San Benito County Arts Council) got her grant, both organizations kicked in $1,000 to get it done.”
Friend said Laine came to the posts with the idea and told them there was a state grant for veterans’-related art projects.
“Being that the artist is a veteran and it’s being done on the Veterans’ Building we qualified for that grant,” Friend said. “There are more grants available this year and we’re going to try to get Stage 2 for electrical boxes on the side of the building and maybe another mural on the south side.”
Laine said the mural is part of the Arts Council’s Veterans’ Voices project.
“It is funded by a $9,700 grant from the California Arts Council,” she said. “It’s a two-part project where we are working with the American Legion and VFW on the mural and we’re also doing a series of short films in collaboration with CMAP (Community Media Access Partnership in Gilroy) on veterans’ stories.”
She spoke of Orabuena, relating that he served three tours in Iraq and that he had previously worked with the two posts on a mural at the base of Park Hill.
“When we spoke with the American Legion and VFW about this project, they were very enthusiastic about working with him again,” she said. “He’s done a number of murals in town. He did the car lot mural (San Benito Street on the north end of Hollister) and he’s done a couple private murals, like one on Westside Liquors and the boxing center on Hillcrest.”
Laine told of how Orabuena met several times at the beginning of the project, attending meetings of both organizations last August and September. He worked on several conceptual drawings as the veterans made suggestions of what they would like to see in the mural.
“The mural depicts different wars, from Vietnam to the present,” Laine said, “and represents all the branches of service. It was a collaborative process from start to finish.”
The veterans’ art project was coincidentally developing at the same time the city was collaborating with the Arts Council and the public art review committee. So the process of approving the mural to be placed on prime downtown real estate fell into place as she worked with Friend, Joe Love, the former American Legion commander, and Ramirez. Laine said the mural and films should be completed by May.
“The films will be a great opportunity to share local veterans’ stories with the public. We’re considering different formats,” she said, noting that there may be an outdoor, block party celebration to simultaneously show the films and unveil the mural. “Obviously, people can see the mural now, but we would like to celebrate both parts of the project in one evening.”
The Arts Council has been working with the city to add more art to local public buildings.
“This was the first purposely to come before the committee, which is made up of artists, designers, muralists, and residents, so they’re really enthusiastic and this gave us the opportunity to let the committee do its work,” Laine said. “There were questions more about the maintenance and logistics, and not so much about the design. Then the committee made its recommendation to City Hall at their Nov. 21 city council meeting, who then approved the mural.”
Because of the steps it took to get the mural approved, Laine said local artists will know going forward how to approach the community with their artwork.
“There’s a lot more support now for the artists doing this kind of work,” she said.
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