Pow!Wow! San Jose mural fest expands into new territory
No longer left behind, residential South San Jose getting the beauty treatment with new murals at locations including a community center and a park.
It’s no secret that murals abound in San Jose. Our street life has been improved by the addition of wall art in the downtown core, Japantown, Willow Glen, on The Alameda and parts of East San Jose (though some of those have disturbingly disappeared).
The Pow!Wow! San Jose festival has been responsible for bringing a lot of that fresh art to the city since 2017, the product of a great collaboration between Empire Seven Studios and Universal Grammar. Once again, about a dozen artists are adding to the city’s catalog of murals, but this year some of the art will be popping up in an unexpected place: residential South San Jose.
Once the site of countless orchards, earning the area the nickname Blossom Valley, South San Jose turned into tract homes and strip malls starting in the 1960s. I can say from experience it was a great place to grow up in the ’80s, but culture only extended as far as the arcade and cineplex at Oakridge Mall.
Pow!Wow! co-director Stacey Kellogg grew up in South San Jose, too, and knew its residents deserved to be part of the artistic renaissance happening in other parts of the city. The only mural of note in the area is one recently completed by Sam Rodriguez at the Edenvale Library. “A lot of the people who live here aren’t necessarily going to come downtown unless they have a specific reason,” she said. “So we’re bringing the art to them.”
Murals are being painted at the Southside Community Center and the Village Oaks shopping center on Cottle Road, UA Local Union 393’s hall on San Ignacio Avenue, and a skateboard park and restroom building at Great Oaks Park in Edenvale. (You can find locations of all the current and previous murals, as well as information on other related music events this week, at www.powwowsanjose.com.)
San Jose City Councilman Sergio Jimenez, who urged Pow!Wow! to extend the festival to his district, will host a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Saturday from 2 to 6 p.m. at the skate park on Snow and Giusti Drives. And on Sunday, the traditional Pow!Wow! mural bike ride — co-presented by the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition and San Jose Bike Party — will kick off at 11 a.m. from the union hall at 6293 San Ignacio Ave.
JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL RETURNS: The Silicon Valley Jewish Film Festival opens its 28th year on Sunday with a screening of “Picture of His Life,” a look at the experiences of underwater photographer Amos Nachoum. Both Nachoum and director Dani Menkin are scheduled to take part in a discussion and reception following the 6:30 p.m. film at the Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto.
The festival, which continues though Nov. 17, has really expanded geographically, and this year there will be 24 screenings at the AMC Saratoga in San Jose and 23 at CineArts in Palo Alto, with speakers and filmmakers appearing at both locations.
The “centerpiece” film, “Working Woman,” a drama about workplace harassment, will screen Nov. 6 in Palo Alto and Nov. 7 in San Jose. It’ll be followed by a panel featuring Illana Shoshan-Diamant, a former Miss Israel and co-founder of the Women’s Empowerment Foundation, and former Santa Clara County Counsel and UC-Berkeley law professor Ann Ravel, whose work with the Renne Law Group specializes in cases involving sexual harassment.
On top of the regular collection of dramas and comedies, the lineup also includes documentaries on Universal Pictures founder Carl Laemmle, publisher Joseph Pulitzer baseball catcher-turned-WWII spy Moe Berg, and sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer. Get schedule and ticket information at www.svjff.org.