Colorful mural adds pop to Guadalupe River visitor center

The Guadalupe River Park and Gardens visitor and education center on Coleman Avenue is showing off some colorful pop that pays tribute to the area’s wildlife with a new 5,500 square-foot mural created by design and architecture firm Gensler.

You might recall that the brick building — also home to the Guadalupe River Park Conservancy office — was in sorry shape last summer before a team of volunteers weeded the area around it, spruced up the native plants, restored the sign out front and gave the building a new paint job.

But Christine Laing, a principal at Gensler’s San Jose office, says the muted color beige-and-green scheme allowed the building to recede into the background, hardly creating a great first impression for visitors or conveying the conservancy’s mission to bring people and nature together. “We’ve brought in a few of the fun and local wildlife that inhabit the adjacent river. In short, the mural speaks volumes about the advocacy and education happening at the GRPC; it’s a friendly and fun learning zone for the kids,” Laing said.

The mural wraps around the building, covering most of the beige with blue, yellow and green sections, as well as gray images of salmon, ducks and other birds. The actual painting of the mural was a big team effort — with San Jose-based Brush House art and design translating the mural onto the building, McCarthy Building Companies providing installation resources and Valdez Painting priming the building and donating paint and other supplies.

The end result, incidentally, may well be San Jose’s biggest example of paint-by-numbers art. After the mural was outlined on the visitor center, it was coded with a number scheme that allowed more than 50 volunteers from Gensler and McCarthy to work on it over a two-week period in May.

And while the visitor’s center remains closed because of COVID-19 restrictions, people will certainly be able to find it when it reopens.

VIRTUAL SUCCESS: The Children’s Discovery Museum’s Legacy for Children gala may have been online this year, but it was still an engaging success for the San Jose institution. More than 160 people joined in Thursday evening for the virtual ceremony, which honored music educator Roberta Guaspari and included a performance by Black Violin, a string duo that plays a hybrid of classical and hip-hop music.

Donors contributed more than $53,000 to the iconic Purple Museum during the event, and that’s just part of the $1.4 million raised by Children’s Discovery Museum’s board of directors. That money will help cover admission revenue lost during the 391 days the museum was closed from March 2020 until this spring.

STUDENT SUPPORT: Chi Am Circle — a nonprofit created by Asian American women in Silicon Valley — has been providing scholarships to Santa Clara County students for 45 years but really outdid itself this year, awarding a record $119,000 to 41 students. The scholarship winners were celebrated during a Zoom event June 13, which included an inspiring keynote from Kristi Yamaguchi, the Olympic figure skating champ and founder of the Always Dream Foundation.

Meanwhile, a new scholarship program at Menlo-Atherton High School also found itself with a lot to celebrate. The Ubuntu Scholarship Program, which was established in 2020, had planned to award two $5,000 scholarships to graduating African-American seniors, but it was actually able to do a bit more than that.

Supporters provided enough funding to grant three scholarships, as well as one-time $1,000 awards to two other finalists. The $5,000 honorees are Ja Corey Stewart, Daujae Degraffenreed, and Keilee Shepard, with Eric Stuart and Kayli Smith receiving $1,000 awards. If you’re interested in finding out more about the program or contributing, email MABearsUbuntu@gmail.com.