If you are lucky enough to connect with mixed-media artist Maddy McBirney, she may be inspired to create an art piece for you. McBirney explains, “I was always the kind of artist that just made things for other people. I didn’t sell or market my work. If I visited someone abroad and connected with them, I would make them a painting and ship it to them. Same with family. I do things like that. It’s kind of an emotional, inspirational way to work.”
Born and raised in Los Angeles, McBirney became interested in printmaking during high school and later studied graphic design at the University of California, Davis. Inspired by teachers she encountered throughout school, McBirney pursued teaching for a short time before professionally practicing graphic design and settling in Los Altos to raise her family. During that time, her passion for art never faltered, and much like with her personal art, she became inspired to bring art to the community with which she felt a deep connection.
As a long-time resident of Los Altos, McBirney has been a persistent arts advocate for the city, volunteering as an arts educator with the Los Altos Art Docents, collaborating on grants to secure specialized arts education in elementary schools, and serving on the art commission for seven years. During her tenure, she facilitated the implementation of artistic bicycle racks downtown despite falling short on percent-for-art initiatives and systemic funding for public art. While progress within city government was slow going, her time in the arts commission connected her to the community and local business and taught her much about public art. She explains, “I started attending public art conventions in cities like Chicago and Nashville, and it was enlightening to see people creating spaces and public art and placemaking.”
“I started attending public art conventions in cities like Chicago and Nashville, and it was enlightening to see people creating spaces and public art and placemaking.” -Maddy McBirney
After resigning from the art commission, feeling like she could only achieve her goals related to public art with legislation, McBirney was determined to spend more time in the studio.
However, it took only a short time before friends and members of a newly formed downtown coalition encouraged her to attend meetings, citing her enthusiasm for public art. In her first meeting, members inquired about what it would take to bring art downtown. McBirney forged ahead, working with that coalition to devise a plan to use private property and private funding to facilitate public art installations. She recalls, “I asked my friend, Karen Zucker, who was on the commission and now codirects with me, if she would be interested in starting a nonprofit to create public art and placemaking on private property with private funding. It was inspiring because there was interest, and it was something we were asked to do. It wasn’t like we were looking for these projects ourselves.”
The tree-lined village of Los Altos has served as a residential community in the heart of Silicon Valley since its incorporation in 1952. While Los Altos may not be the first city that comes to mind when considering a destination for arts and culture, there has long been an undercurrent of art appreciation exemplified by institutions such as the Los Altos Art Docents, Gallery 9, and the city’s Art Without Walls, a sculpture loan program. Volunteer-led Arts Los Altos, co-directed by McBirney and Zucker, was formed in 2020 to elevate the cultural identity of Los Altos to the front of mind. The arts nonprofit is working to implement public art that creates connections among diverse community members and local businesses while creating space and drawing visitors.
In the three years since Arts Los Altos was founded, the organization has facilitated over 12 public art projects, including the California Birds, Stewards of the Environment mural by Roan Victor on the Comerica Bank on 3rd Street and the HYBYCOZO Mandahlia sculpture located on the corner of State and 3rd Streets. Arts Los Altos hosts public art walking tours on the first Friday of every month, meeting at the Mandahlia sculpture and leaving at 5pm sharp. When asked what the future holds for Arts Los Altos, McBirney immediately discusses plans to transform a small private plaza and recalls a separate augmented reality project. McBirney hopes to balance volunteering and spending time creating her own art by keeping public art projects to a manageable one to two per year. She recently held her first solo art exhibition at the Los Altos Library, and when asked how her work with Arts Los Altos has impacted her artwork, she shares, “It’s not changed my work, but it’s made me realize that I want to do more of it. I work with other artists, and seeing their work inspires me to create my own.”
Images: 1 – (L to R) Maddy McBirney and Karen Zucker 2 – 200 Main Street [An Inventory of Time and Place] by Martha Sakellariou 3 – Apricot Blossoms by Roan Victor 4 – Main Street Movie Theater Remembered by Emily Fromm
Wisper’s life resembles an uncanny stack of page-turners. Conversations with him dredge up metaphors, tuned specifically to the relationship between identity and outcome. Subjective as art and truth may be, the sublime coincidences within his experiences hint at more.
As teenagers, Wisper and his best friends—Sno, Poe, Shen Shen, and Bizr—formed the intersection of two arts groups: Together We Create, a collective of muralists (est. 1985), and LORDS Crew (Legends of Rare Designs, est. 1986), a graffiti crew whose members grew out of San Jose and drew international attention. For this tight group of young, talented artists, the potential for fame was palpable. But certain threads split the chapters of their lives into unraveled dichotomies. For Wisper, a path of criminality handed him a prison sentence of 26 to life—ultimately, an unknowable length of time for truth, beauty, justice, and their rivals to battle through his mind like restless gods.
He vividly remembers the first time he caught injustice red-handed. As the middle sibling in his mother’s home at the time, it baffled him that after his father’s death, social security payments owed to his mother—$300 per child—couldn’t bring the family clothes, food, or rent installments. He and his brothers were eating rice every day that summer. Then one night, as he performed his usual chore of cleaning his stepfather’s car, he found Burger King wrappers. Claims didn’t match the evidence.
“If you can learn how to operate from a place of peace while creating art, you can learn how to operate from a place of peace in all aspects of your life.” _Wisper
There was little he could do about it, other than rebel. As a creative kid with a knack for detail, Wisper looked for his identity in spaces where originality shined. In the world of hip-hop, among b-boys, DJs, and rappers, Wisper was hooked by the wave of graffiti that made its way over from the East Coast, bringing with it a culture that admired innovation. As the LORDS Crew formed and grew its membership, some of his friends and fellow founding members went to vocational school to pursue graphic design.
But for Wisper, gang membership stood out as the most attractive option. “Everything I was seeking—unconditional love, loyalty, recognition, notoriety, reputation, education—they were giving it.” His gift for teaching was cultivated by their discipline. He could come up with illustrations and analogies to help someone else learn and memorize the codes of membership, without having to write a single word.
The last year Wisper did graffiti was 1988. The following year he was arrested. Once inside prison, faced with a life sentence, he found no reason to change. To survive, he leveraged his street education and climbed the ranks until he was running the yard. The attention and his gang affiliation eventually sent him to solitary confinement in 1994, with other men in solitary confinement “deemed incorrigible.”
In the monotony, Wisper contemplated the value of his life. His path into crime had been a gradual progression of “becoming more and more empty.” As he explains today, “People who commit crimes don’t understand value. If I steal from you, if I vandalize your house…I don’t value you as a person. If my life doesn’t mean something, no one else’s does either.” Even a cup, he reasoned, had worth. It was created for a purpose. Yet like a cup left on the shelf, here he was, a human being locked away in sensory deprivation. If his life had purpose, it couldn’t come from this environment, not from his upbringing, his heritage, or ideologies—which he had been willing to die for. And which he was still affiliated with.
He knew he wanted to change, but change only began when he mustered the courage to revoke his prison gang status, fully aware of the punishment to follow.
Wisper credits supernatural intervention in the events that actually occurred once he lost his status. By the code, he should have died in prison—killed by his own cellmate to protect the rest of the gang. But his life was spared. By the law, he should have been rejected for parole. Involvement with prison gangs was deemed a greater offense than the crime that sentenced him in the first place. But the inmates who would have reported him had been removed from the yard weeks before his arrival.
By the time Wisper came home in 2013, nearly 24 years had passed. His former collaborator, Bizr, had written “FREE WISPER TOUR” on every art piece until Bizr’s passing in 2013, eight months before Wisper’s release. Of the friends who had kept in touch with him, Mesngr was the only one still in San Jose, doing art shows. As he slowly readjusted to life back in society, Wisper decided his goal was to “get my art out, make some money, provide for myself and my family.”
Wisper began looking for opportunities, at times initiating them by reaching out to connections and bringing plywood for the artists to live paint on. As he formed the groundwork to revitalize Together We Create, he also accepted opportunities to speak at high schools and colleges. There were youth who wanted to learn graffiti, and Wisper saw the chance to share about his mistakes so they could make better decisions.
“That’s where I developed a curriculum of teaching peace,” he explains. Acting from a place of courage is revered, but in that state, fear is still present—“you’re acting in spite of fear.” He teaches his mentees to accept responsibility for where they’re at and to apply a faith-based practice until they can believe in themselves. “If you don’t know who you are, you can’t create unique art.”
There are still threads to unravel. To this day, he fights to control the blaze of anger that slices through at injustice. Just like in his youth, he feels the pressure to stay on guard, to secure himself and his safety. “After 24 years of living like that, you don’t just come home and start expressing emotions.” But he knows himself, and he values his life. That deep sense of peace is unshakeable. Hanging around Wisper, friends might not notice how calm and collected he is until he laughs—then, they’re caught by the irreversible, unforgettable belly laugh flying out of him.
This year marks nine years since his release—nine years of using his freedom to help youth secure their self-identity. Often called on to speak and share his story, he is in the final stages of publishing three books that he hopes will aid their discernment. Wisper believes that all people hold a sense of justice, beauty, and truth—but an absence of self-identity spawns a perilous emptiness. “If you’re empty your whole life,” he says, “you don’t know what full is.”
His mission now is to inspire others to create art from a secure sense of identity, free of the pressure to fit a label or hide under a mask. “If you can learn how to operate from a place of peace while creating art,” he promises, “you can learn how to operate from a place of peace in all aspects of your life.”
The tools are few—paint, a brush, a blank wall, and an idea. Yet it is the artistry of working up close while maintaining the integrity of the larger picture that makes murals so fascinating. These transformed walls are portals that can take you to another place, another thought process, another view on life. It is through these modern tapestries that San Jose culture is expressed and defined, inviting viewers to pause to reflect on who we are as a society and what are our ideals. The following are only a few of the many wonderful murals throughout San Jose. (Article originally published in issue 7.5 ” Serve,” 2016)
1.Anno Domini Mural Collage Anno Domini, 366 S. 1st St, San Jose Produced by Anno Domini (2005–2013)
When Anno Domini moved to the SoFA District, they wanted people to be able to find them quickly and to give those unfamiliar with the gallery a hint as to what is inside. This collage of international artists’ murals signals to those entering South First Street that this is where they’ll encounter the most concentrated arts and culture spaces in the city.
(from left to right): Carolyn Ryder Cooley (New York) & Lena Wolff (California); Daniel Jesse Lewis (California); Jessie Rose Vala (New Mexico); David Choe (California); Bruno 9Li (Brazil), Klone (Israel), Adrian Lee (California); Know Hope (Israel)
2. Tribute to Rahsaan Roland Kirk Cafe Stritch, 374 S. 1st St, San Jose Produced by Cafe Stritch (2014)
This three-story mural is a tribute to Rahsaan Roland Kirk, the late jazz legend who often played multiple instruments at once. When Rahsaan Kirk’s widow saw the mural for the first time, it brought her to tears.
Artists: Roger Ourthiague and Chris Anway (California)
3. What You Are, I Once Was Brazilian Blowout Bar, 489 S. Market St, San Jose
Produced by The Exhibition District (2015)
This mural is an homage to California and a commentary on the current drought situation. The hair represents water, and the skull represents scarcity.
Artist: Stephanie Azevedo (San Jose, California)
4. Santo Market 245 E. Taylor St, San Jose Produced by Empire Seven Studios (2014)
John is a sign painter who specializes his fine artwork within a semi-impressionistic style, using an Italian Renaissance color palette. His subject matter includes surreal images of monsters and parodies of Old Masters paintings. This image is a parody of the iconic Japanese woodblock print The Great Wave off Kanagawa.
Artist: John Barrick (San Jose, California)
5. Fountain Alley Mural: Phylum of the Free Lido Night Club, 30 S. 1st St, San Jose Produced by Phantom Galleries and San Jose Downtown Association (2015)
This piece speaks to the idea of learning to cohabit as technology progresses and to the determination that it takes to exist and push forward.
Artist: Jeffrey Hemming (San Jose, California)
6. Little Moment, Nichi Bei Bussan, 140 Jackson St, San Jose Produced by Empire Seven Studios (2015)
This urban contemporary piece is left to the audience’s interpretation. It allows different people to connect on different levels by going beyond just one story or theme, encouraging viewers to use their imagination to open up numerous narratives and ideas.
Artist: NoseGo (Pennsylvania)
7. Homage, Chevron, 135 E. Santa Clara St, San Jose Produced by Anno Domini and San Jose Downtown Association (2005)
This mural is a tribute to John Carlos and Tommie Smith’s famous black power salute at the 1968 Olympics.
Artists: Paul Ulrich and Chris Duncan (California)
8. SoFA The Studio, 396 S. 1st St, San Jose Produced by SVCreates (formerly 1stAct) and SoFA District (2009)
This mural depicts the eclectic offerings of the SoFA area.
