This Sacramento artist is changing our urban landscape one giant mural at a time

When Maren Conrad was a young girl, she knew she loved art but didn’t think it was a viable career path.

She didn’t feel that she fit in with other artistic types. She also didn’t know of many current successful artists who were women.

Conrad ended up studying art at Chico State, despite those misgivings. After college, she managed a bar, met a man, fell in love, got married and had a baby. After an unimaginable tragedy made her a single mother raising a son, Conrad had to blaze her own trail.

That trail has led to Sacramento and back to art, where her work is writ large, seen in multiple murals throughout the city.

Growing up, Conrad had dyslexia, which made school challenging. Art was a welcome escape.

“I needed a place where I could shine and things didn’t have to be in order,” Conrad recalled.

When her mother went back to school to get an art degree, Conrad often tagged along. She was enamored with her mom’s art supplies, and wanted to use them, too. Her mother encouraged her to go to college and get a major in the field that most interested her - art.

Like many other art majors, she found herself in another field after graduation. Conrad ended up managing a bar. It was through that job that she met her husband, a banker. She had her own fairy tale - marriage in Spain, honeymoon in Italy. The couple welcomed a son. When her son was only five months old, her husband was murdered during a home invasion.

For the next five years, she focused on her child. But after he started school, painting started to call to her again, and she began going to a friend’s studio to paint. At her first show, seven of her paintings sold. It was a whirlwind start.

Conrad ended up being commissioned to paint a mural inside a couple’s home in Beverly Hills. She enjoyed the project and loved working with the people. When it was over, however, she noticed it just wasn’t very fulfilling.

“Anything would have been beautiful in that beautiful space,” she remembers thinking.

When David Sobon from Sacramento’s Wide Open Walls organization approached her to see if she would be interested in painting a mural, Conrad didn’t want to let the opportunity pass her by. She looked at the back of the MARRS building and knew she wanted to be the one to turn it into something beautiful.

Painting murals was a perfect fit, and she said she loved the process of bringing beauty to dark places.

“I felt so alive,” she said. “I’m a people person, and it felt so good to be out painting with people.”

She noticed that murals change the city. You can take a dark alley that a woman would be afraid to walk in alone, and put something joyful in it. It then becomes a destination and a photo opportunity. A safe place where people congregate and have their phones out taking pictures.

Conrad sees mural painting as an opportunity to tell the story of a place and its people. It’s a chance to make a statement. The koi on the back of the MARRS building, for example, is partly a tribute to the Chinese workers who played a big role in building railroads to California and their many other contributions to Sacramento’s history.

You may have also seen her Mr. T mural in midtown. She self-funded that piece after watching the Netflix documentary “13th,” which analyzes the criminalization of African Americans after the 13th Amendment abolished slavery.

In looking for an icon, she researched Mr. T, and learned that he named himself “Mister” after wondering why his father and other Black men constantly were called “boy.” Mr. T was a fun subject that still sent a message.

Conrad said she likes to work with people whose ethnic backgrounds are reflected in her subjects so she is able to get things right.

“We can figure out how to proceed with cultural appreciation, without appropriation,” she said. “That way we can do better going forward.”

As a fifth-generation Californian, she knows the area is rich in history and she is especially drawn to highlighting stories that aren’t well known.

Conrad created the Wishing Wall, which depicts a dandelion, in Historic Alley. She said she wanted to take a place of desperation and bring hope to it. Now, she said, it’s a place where people think about their hopes and dreams and make wishes.

What she really loves about murals is that they are out in public for everyone to enjoy. The Wishing Wall is one of her many murals that have an interactive element.

“The people are the star of the piece,” she said. “It isn’t finished until people take their pictures in it. It shows people what our community looks like.”

One of her hopes is to increase the accessibility of street art to women. Currently only 1% of street artists are women, she said.

“I didn’t grow up thinking I could be an artist, and I want to show girls what they can do.”

It’s her belief that murals can change a city and make communities safer. When there is beautiful art on the walls, it makes people want to keep the space around it cleaner.

Conrad’s passion for access for women is seen in her “I Vote” mural series, which features lesser-known women of the West who helped make the 19th Amendment a reality. The series celebrates 100 years of women voting with portraits of 19 influential suffragettes.

“We need to rethink how to use art to be a part of the community,” she said. Along those lines, the self-described “research nerd” likes to combine history and art to inform the people who see it. In the “I Vote” series, each portrait includes a QR code that links the viewer to a biographical video of each of the women -- and a partnership with Sacramento Contemporary Dance Theatre brings the videos to life with choreographed vignettes.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s death also struck a nerve with Conrad, and she knew she had to do a portrait of her. The piece went up in an alley at 24th and J streets.

“It was so cathartic,” she said of the experience.

In the Sacramento arts community, Conrad said she would like to see more support and collaboration over competition.

“There is no scarcity, there is abundance,” she said. “Others’ success costs you nothing.”

She sees mural opportunities as a partnership in talking and listening, and she said she loves to meet new people and hear their stories.

Lots of additional pieces of public art are in her future.

“I will paint until I can’t get on a ladder anymore,” she said.