San Bernardino County Arts Features Local Artist

Artist at work with Darren Villegas

Darren Villegas @darren.vs.drama, IE based muralist, digital designer and illustrator. If you’ve lived, worked, or passed through the IE, chances are you’ve seen, walked by, or rode near or around his works of art.

Growing up in the IE, he shared his time with split parents in San Bernardino and Colton. From 3rd through 12th grade, he was in the San Bernardino public school system and also attended Valley College for a short period of time.

Art has always been his vehicle to imagine a more creative perspective of his surroundings while growing up in San Bernardino. It also transformed the streets into an unlimited artscape for his young imagination.

As a teen in the early and mid 90’s, he played out his creative fantasies in the streets of SB and Colton. Exploring the unkept parts of the city that few would ever see, many times on his own, leaving colorful expressions in the darkness. It was exhilarating, character shaping, scary, and dangerous all at the same time.

All those early years in San Bernardino and Colton were the foundation of his life’s artistic journey.

About a year ago, Darren made the big leap and started his business MASS murals, which stands for Mural Art and Signage Solutions. These days his household’s livelihood and his creative works are one in the same. It requires a lot of drive, and a never ending commitment to learning new things about business, and the art industry.

We asked him if he had any advice for other folx in the IE/SB who are looking to take their art more seriously, “To reach your art goals, there is no substitution for paying your dues and putting in the work. It may take a decade or more before you reach your goals, as it should. Discouraging things should happen to you along the way, but that's just to weed out who really deserves it. So get to it my friend!”

Thanks Darren for sharing your time and your words! You are living proof that passion and hard work and creativity can take you to new heights. Make sure to follow him and his work on IG @darren.vs.drama and website: massmurals.art

Stay tuned in for the full interview on the print version! Looking forward to what Darren will create in the future!

Read on Instagram: artsconnection_network

UC Riverside X Leadership Riverside X Darren Villegas

Campus supports downtown mural project

A mural project supported by UC Riverside is providing a burst of color and promoting a spirit of resiliency in downtown Riverside.

The campus is one of the co-sponsors of the Riverside Resiliency Mural. Mariam Lam, vice chancellor for diversity, equity, and inclusion, served as a member of Leadership Riverside, the group that commissioned the mural. 

Painted on a wall of the back of Box theater, next to the historic Riverside Fox Theater, the mural by Riverside artist Darren Villegas will be unveiled at a March 31 ceremony. The mural is 65 feet high and 25 feet wide.

Leadership Riverside is a 10-month program by the Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce in which representatives from local businesses, government agencies, nonprofit groups, schools, and universities tackle regional issues and develop a project.

Lam is the latest campus representative to take part in the program. Her cohort began meeting in May 2020, shortly after the pandemic began. As a result, the issues the campus and greater community were dealing with in managing COVID-19 while continuing to function and survive resonated with the group, Lam said.

“All of us were so united in the theme of resiliency because it affected every aspect of our lives,” Lam said.

It also spoke to the region’s history of low funding for government services, such as healthcare and mental health funding, and Riverside historically overcoming those obstacles as it did with higher pollution levels in earlier decades, she said.

Lam also served as chair of the artist selection committee, which described its goal as depicting the “resiliency, vibrancy, history and innovation employed to navigate our world and community during the global pandemic.”

The committee received over a dozen submissions, but Lam described Villegas as “everyone’s favorite by a landslide.” Villegas has worked in the Inland region and San Francisco, painting around 60 murals that feature vivid colors and use of symmetry. His design depicts images of the city’s past, present, and future. 

Villegas began painting the mural in November and completed it in early March, spending more than 320 hours and using about 350 cans of paint. 

It incorporates a Chinese pavilion as homage to the Riverside’s old Chinatown; citrus groves that speak to the region’s agricultural history; and palm tree silhouettes. Circuit lines run across the mural to symbolize innovation while two dancers represent art.

The late Sam Huang, a Riverside City College professor who created several Riverside murals, is one of two prominent figures featured. The other figure is a nurse with a mask, as part of Villegas’ tribute to caregivers’ service during the pandemic. 

“I wanted it to be really bright and vibrant and uplift people,” Villegas said.

Read on InsideUCR.ucr.edu

The Press-Enterprise (Riverside Resilience Mural)

Three-story mural celebrates Riverside’s cultural heritage

As a child, Darren Villegas couldn’t get enough of Looney Tunes cartoons and classic Disney animation.

That inspired him to pick up a pen and brush and start making art.

“As a pre-teen, I was very into comic books, rock ‘n’ roll album art and later became obsessed with books like ‘Subway Art’ and ‘Spraycan Art,’” the 43-year-old Riverside resident said.

Later, when he moved to San Francisco to attend the City College of San Francisco and Academy of Art University in San Francisco, he studied the great muralists of Mexico and was deeply moved by their work. The Chicano mural art movement of California from the ’60s and ’70s also helped Villegas find his calling.

Villegas taught mural art classes for teens for community organizations and painted several large-scale murals throughout San Francisco and Oakland before returning to Riverside in 2017.

Now — approximately 320 hours of labor and 350 cans of spray paint later — he has completed the “Riverside Resilience” mural on the back wall of The Box at the Fox Entertainment Plaza in downtown Riverside. It’s roughly 25 feet tall and 65 feet long and spans the height of the wall, from 30 feet off the ground up to what would be the fifth floor of the building. Villegas was the sole laborer on the piece, which is 100% spray paint.

“I’m very honored to share this vibrant work of art with the residents and visitors of Riverside,” he said. “The mural reads from left to right as an homage to our city’s cultural heritage, our residents’ resilience of spirit, our proud commitment to identify as a city of artistic expression and our perseverance towards innovation, for a brighter and stronger post-pandemic future.”

The mural project was spearheaded and coordinated by the Leadership Riverside Class of 2021. The class also found several financial sponsors for the project, including the city of Riverside, California Baptist University and UC Riverside, Villegas said.

Attend the official unveiling of Darren Villegas’ #RiversideResilience mural on Thursday, March 31 from 3-4pm, located on Fairmount Blvd. and Mission Inn Ave. in downtown Riverside.

Read on PE.com

The Press Enterprise (Vivid Murals Boost Civic Pride)

Riverside artist’s vivid murals fight blight, boost civic pride

Looking back on his years growing up in Colton and San Bernardino, Darren Villegas believes it was his dedication to art that kept him away from a gang lifestyle.

He had developed an interest in hip hop culture and spray-can art, within which he saw a culture where bravado and competitiveness were expressed through artistic ability and technical skill as opposed to violence.

“It served as a peaceful alternative to the gang violence, which was so prevalent in the Inland Empire during the 1990s,” he said. “By the age of 15 I had discovered the book ‘Subway Art’ by Henry Chalfant and Martha Cooper, and my brain exploded. My love for visual creativity hasn’t stopped since then.”

Villegas moved to Riverside in 1999, but headed to San Francisco where he majored in 3D animation and visual effects at the Academy of Art University. He began to understand how his art could leave a positive mark and become a tool to support social movement causes. Villegas created a series of large banners with his signature style font and color scheme.

“These were carried by marchers and became the trademark icons of San Francisco’s most powerful cultural and social movement campaigns between 2005 and 2012,” he said.

Villegas began partnering with several nonprofit organizations in 2005 to develop and teach mural art classes for teenagers at local community centers.

“My students and I would dialogue about relevant topics as a group, brainstorm images for a mural composition, then execute a community-involved mural,” he said. “Many of my students were at risk of becoming high school dropouts or turning to a life of crime.”

Under Villegas, the program provided the young people with a positive artistic experience that allowed them to be part of something and to express their emotions.

“I was able to steer them away from crime and violence into a positive direction from adolescence into their adulthood,” he said. After several years of the program’s success, Villegas was awarded a Certificate of Honor in the Arts from the San Francisco Mayor’s office and Board of Supervisors.

In addition to facilitating mural art workshops and lecturing for several institutions including Stanford University, San Francisco State University and City College of San Francisco, in 2016 Villegas created “Cycles of Regeneration,” one of the largest single-artist murals in San Francisco’s Mission District area.

In 2017, Villegas returned to Riverside in hopes of using his experience to help develop the Inland region’s blossoming mural art movement. He painted a mural at Riverside City College and most recently contributed to the city of Riverside’s rapidly expanding collection of murals with “Two Lovers” at 14th and Market streets, “Universal Jazzman” at the Fox Theater and “The John Lewis Tribute Mural,” which was commissioned by the Civil Rights Institute of Inland Southern California.

Villegas said all of the murals he painted in 2020, as well as his digital artwork and design, have a distinctly colorful and vibrant feel. His intent is to use this vibrancy to awaken the viewer’s inner creativity, breathing life and joy into both the viewer and the surrounding area.

“The arts, and specifically murals, are so important to communities in so many ways,” Villegas said. “Mural art combats urban blight, brightens up the surrounding areas and increases the spirit of civic pride within the residents of a city. And surprisingly, professional mural art installations actually deter vandalism. Many businesses who struggle with property defacement issues solve their problem by covering their blank wall with a permanent mural installation.”

Villegas is beginning a partnership with Women Wonder Writers to facilitate an art workshop series and mural project around the subject of environmental justice. He will soon be launching a new mural art business called MASS Murals.

Read on PE.com

Voyage LA Magazine

Meet Darren Villegas

Today we’d like to introduce you to Darren Villegas.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Darren. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I graduated from street artist to art activist, to art educator. Like many teenagers growing up in the Inland Empire who are seeking an alternative to gang violence, I became fascinated with creating graffiti art at the age of 15, eventually moving to San Francisco as an adult to pursue this passion. Over the next ten years, my graffiti art matured into spray-painted murals which were featured in several nationally published art magazines and video documentaries. As a college student, I began educating myself on artists who used their artwork for social change, inspiring me to incorporate a newfound level of consciousness into my artwork. I began using my artwork to support local activist campaigns and started teaching a youth-based mural art class for several non-profit organizations at local community centers. Many young people were eager to enroll as students in my classes since my prior graffiti art persona held a certain amount of urban art cache. I saw echoes of my youth in the eyes of these teenagers, and I decided to use my influence to steer their lives in a positive direction.

I embraced the role of not only an art teacher but a life mentor to many of my students. I began incorporating educational workshops into the mural art process, where students were educated about the issues affecting their lives. We would dialogue about these topics as a group, brainstorm images for a mural composition, then execute a community-involved mural. These murals would beautify communities, empower the youth with a sense of self-worth and civic responsibility, and decrease vandalism. After ten years of performing this uplifting form of art activism, I was awarded a Certificate of Honor in the Arts from the San Francisco Mayor’s office and Board of Supervisors. I moved back to Riverside 4 years ago, and I’m very happy to continue to spread my vibrant artwork throughout the streets of Southern California. I have a long-term personal goal of establishing an art scholarship fund for Inland Empire high school students to transfer to a university and pursue a career in the arts.

Has it been a smooth road?
The hardest part of my journey has been transitioning my mindset away from the negative stigmas associated with some forms of street art and reframing my artwork toward a broader, more universal audience. Some of the struggles along the way included working up to four jobs at a time while attending the Academy of Art University of San Francisco. Also, being arrested multiple times in my early days for creating my artwork in the dark, unkept, forgotten parts of the urban landscape, beneath the street level and outside of the reality of the average citizen. Although these were rough times, full of struggle, they helped to shape my sense of resilience and dedication to my artwork and personal expressionism. Although the past may be painted in greyscale, I view the future as a blank canvas that I look forward to painting with the brightest, most vibrant colors of the rainbow!

Please tell us more about your art.
My murals and digital designs have a distinctly colorful and vibrant attack. I use brightly saturated tones and high contrast to bring my imagery and lettering to life. I want my artwork to shout out positivity to you! It feels great to have people now recognize my style and reach out to me for art installations. My personal arsenal of unique imagery combinations include: cosmic, dust-filled, star-sprinkled space scenes, richly saturated, dramatically lit roses and other flowers, multi-cultural colorful textile patterns, pale color-washed clouds, flowing shiny golden ribbons, impressionistic facial portraiture, simplified pastel interpretations of iconic architecture, and vibrantly colored overlapping stylized cursive script textures. These are the building blocks of my style, but I’m constantly nurturing these elements for growth into their future manifestations. It is a very fun ride to be on!

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
More and more people are accessing the creative and artistic sides of themselves, and it is becoming more and more accepted by society at large. I feel that visual creativity is the new frontier. As in the past, there have been huge world-changing inventions such as the automobile, alternating current, and computer technology, the future will turn the human mind inward to unlock history’s next era of imaginative innovation. The fusion of technology and the human artistic power of imagination will bring about the next era of evolution, and the ability to produce useful applications from this fusion will be the currency of the future. Rather than mining for gold, coal, or oil, in the future the person who can mine their own imagination for creative, artistic, and most importantly, visual expressions will be valued by large industry far beyond the current amount of value assigned to them.

If you had to start over, what would you have done differently? 
If I had to start over, I would have given myself permission to let my true spirit sing right from the beginning. For so many years in the beginning of my art journey, I held myself captive within the prison of fear. As I have matured as a person and as an artist, I recognize that it is ok to be uniquely yourself and express that spirit as such. Do not be afraid to let your true light shine onto the world. You may be freeing other people from their own prison without even knowing it. Inspiration is the currency of artists, and imagination is our strongest weapon. All things must be imagined in our minds before they manifest into the physical world. So imagine hard, bright, and vibrantly!

Read on VoyageLA.com

Instituto Familiar de la Raza to Celebrate New Mural

A nonprofit serving San Francisco’s Chicano, Latino and Indígena communities on Mission Street near 25th Street is celebrating the completion of a new mural on its rear facade facing Lilac Street. The alley is known for its colorful and culturally relevant murals.

Instituto Familiar de la Raza’s new mural, titled “The Cycle of Re-Generation,” is the work of Darren Villegas. It depicts tree trunks with elements of DNA strands to evoke the concept of Latino traditions and roots. The Aztec goddess of fertility, Mayahuel, takes center stage in the mural as a symbol of life force and carrying on traditions.

In a release, the center highlights a twist the artist incorporated into a traditional image:  “Villegas is also careful to correct history when necessary. As a reminder of the tremendous and sometimes invisible contributions of women, Villegas flips the iconic image of Popocatépetl carrying Itza by showing a female warrior carrying a homeboy.”

High-rise buildings block out sunlight in the mural, symbolizing gentrification.

On Friday, May 12 from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., the Instituto and the Calle 24 Latino Cultural Corridor will host an event featuring food, music, Aztec dance, and speakers.

Read on MissionLocal.org