The Palo Alto History Project, Greg Brown

The Palo Alto History Project

The Greg Brown Murals

The Palo Alto Pedestrians: Public Art for All of Us

Government rarely puts forward a funny face. There’s obviously not much humor in your typical letter from
the IRS or in the driver license renewal process, but public art and civic architecture also tends to be serious
business. Monumental courthouses and statehouses with Corinthian columns, raking cornices, and marbled
statues tend to superimpose a rather superior personality on the face of government. And when it comes to
art, government has a tendency to sponsor modern art sculptures that stand in front of city buildings with a
kind of overblown gravity.

Perhaps that’s the brilliance of the beloved Greg Brown murals that can be seen here and there in the nooks
and crannies of Palo Alto. They are simple, funny and full of surprise---and over the years, they have
become part of the experience of living in Palo Alto. It’s heartening and rather charming that our city
government would give the initial approval for these murals and have tried to protect them over the years.
When you can look up on a faceless concrete building in Palo Alto and see a mural of green aliens climbing
up a stairway to hug a milkman---well, that’s the kind of city I want to live in.

Greg Brown’s work is the only truly popular public art in the city. When some of his murals were slated to
be taken down in recent years due to building demolitions and remodeling, there was a hue and cry from the
citizenry. The City Council worked with some businesses to save the murals and Brown offered to repaint a
couple on new buildings.

And it’s not like Palo Alto citizen critics are all that easy to please. Just last week, a collection of new sound
wall murals slated for West Bayshore Road received less than stellar reviews from many on the Architectural
Review Board. The wall will feature large yield signs with portraits of local Baylands birds above tongue-in-
cheek directions, such as "Wetlands ahead," "Maintain altitude" and "Flight path, No landing."
Many other Palo Alto public works of art have rather notorious reputations. Some are thought pretentious,
others just bizarre. Marta Thoma’s odd statues---“Rrrun,” a car with human legs, and “Go Mama,” a doll
with a face in its belly---certainly come to mind. Other public art pieces have suffered the ultimate in critical
wrath---outright vandalism. The artist who designed the over-sized green metallic egg in Lytton Plaza
known as “Digital DNA,” once suggested planting a video camera inside the egg to stem the tide of
vandalism.

And the gargantuan (and many thought ugly) “Foreign Friends” statue that sat for many years at Waverley
and Embarcadero is now gone. Originally a gift from Palo Alto’s Swedish sister city, the statue of a couple
and their dog on a bench met a rather unfriendly fate. In less than a decade, it was ridiculed, smashed,
sawed, splashed with paint, set on fire, and twice decapitated. It was once even beset by a large, fully
addressed postcard inscribed with the words “Return to Sender.” And these weren’t just high school punks
up to no good, either---it was a Stanford professor who once doused the statue with gasoline and tried to
incinerate it. Tough audience indeed.

But Greg Brown’s murals seem to be beloved by all. Brown’s first mural in Palo Alto came in 1975 as part
of Palo Alto’s Artist in Residence program in which he earned $4.75 an hour to decorate a wall of the
Mitchell Park Skating Rink. Soon he was at work on the “Palo Alto Pedestrians,” a collection of trompe
l'oeil murals of aliens, pelicans, milkmen, regular folks and ne’er-do-wells.

The murals add to the pleasure of a city stroll and bring reminders to the busy, over-stressed errand
runner---slow down, don’t take life so seriously. They seem to catch one at odd moments. On the way into
Restoration Hardware, you might catch a glimpse of an older gentleman pushing a baby alien in a stroller.
Withdrawing cash at Comerica Bank, you might notice an alien ship has crash-landed into its side wall. And
heading into the elevator at 261 Hamilton, you might get a chuckle looking up at the mural of a man with an
evil grin preparing to cut the elevator cables.

Since the mid ‘70s, Brown has probably done more important work in his career. His 2003 gallery show,
“Unlikely Saints” was very well received and he has helped teach the beauty of murals to youngsters for
decades. But the “Palo Alto Pedestrians” hold a special and lasting place in the heart of this city. They are
truly public art---owned by each of us whenever we take a walk downtown.
-Matt Bowling

(Note: This article ran in the Palo Alto Daily News on April 30th, 2007)

Greg Brown in recent years

When he repainted
the burglars, he used
the faces of his two
children instead

Two "Palo Alto Pedestrians,"
one walking and one watering.
(PAHA)

Palo Alto Home Page

The evil doer at 261 Hamilton

P alo Alto People

The muralist rising above his
work

Art & Culture

Brown in the 1970s painting
he and his wife's visages on
two burglars (PAHA)

Palo Alto: Then & Now

2007

circa
1986

The finished product as it looks years later

Greg Brown painting an alien spaceship on the side of the University
Bank. President of the bank Carl Schmitt was so sad to see some of
Brown's murals disappearing that he commissioned him to paint this one.