STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

When John Zender Estrada and his son Deon arrived at Wood River Middle School Saturday morning, they faced a wall of raw concrete block rising high above the school's main entrance.

It was porous, rough as sandpaper and nothing like the smooth surfaces they usually paint their colorful murals on.

They couldn't project their design onto it—the lights washed out in the cavernous space with skylights near the top of the ceiling. So, Estrada, who has painted more than 800 murals in a career spanning four decades, taped a piece of chalk to a 12-foot extender and did what the great Henri Matisse did in his later years—he freehanded the mural he wished to create.

The Estradas had to finish the mural before the students rushed through the door Monday morning.

"We had Plan B ready," the Los Angeles artist said, showing a brush he had wire to a yardstick. "This is highly unorthodox."

Unorthodox or not, father and son persevered and Monday morning Middle School students burst through the front door of the school to find a mural bursting with color and symbolism.

Five hands—one purple, one green, two blue and one brown—rise out of an open world atlas, because, as Estrada explained, these kids will someday graduate, go to college and travel the world.

Words like acceptance, achieve, amigos and valiente sit in the palms of the hands. Words like friends, dream, family, Amistad, bravery and spirit hang suspended among leaves.

John Zender Estrada shows the chalk on the end of the pole that he used to draw the outline for his mural while standing on a ladder.

Snowcapped mountains frame one side of the mural while brown desert mountains occupy the other. A wolverine—the school mascot—occupies and lower right-hand corner.

Roots trail down from the hands anchoring them as living things.

"Each hand obviously represents a different ethnicity," Estrada said. "But they're not just kids—they're growing. They're plants. It's like teachers nurturing children or nurturing trees. When you give kids knowledge, the tree lets go of that knowledge into the world."

This is Estrada's 14th art project in the Wood River Valley since he first visited in March 2021, bringing with him a mural depicting Cesar Chavez during a celebration of the farm worker activist's career. Thirteen of those projects are in Blaine County. One—a mural of veterans riding horses—is painted on a barn at Hiatus Ranch near Shoshone.

Deon Estrada is better at lettering than his father, John Zender Estrada said.

Seeing his past projects would require a tour of the Wood River Valley: A mural of farm laborers at The Hunger Coalition. The butterfly mural at Hop Porter Park. Three evolving versions of a mural at Alturas Elementary School, which started with children reading and eagles. A canvas for the Wood River Land Trust at its Pollinator Meadows. The eye-of-the-beholder mural at the Crisis Hotline and on a Building Material Supply truck.

Two murals for Carlos Hurtado's H Property business, a mural for La Cabanita restaurant. And, two days before he tackled the WRMS project, Estrada added a Sacagawea image to the Alturas mural.

"Idaho blew up,” Estrada said, comparing his Wood River Valley output to the four murals he painted across Florida. "It blew Florida out of the water."

Romero, who runs ProjecToolSuccess, has been the connective thread throughout. He and Estrada go back 30 years to Los Angeles, where Romero used to invite the muralist to work with kids, families and communities at various sites.

Herbert Romero, who first brought John Zender Estrada to the Wood River Valley, watched much of the action.

"It's like a full circle again," Romero said. "For me, it's incredible having to contribute with my partner and friend something of this magnitude."

The Wood River Middle School mural has been two years in the making. Estrada and Romero proposed several designs initially—traditional ones with beavers and wolverines, contemporary ones with children in monochromatic colors. The school sent back references to street art--Banksy-style images with graffiti lettering and words.

"I said, ‘Well, I am a street artist, so it's going to have that vibe no matter what I do,’ " Estrada said.

The Leadership raised money to pay for the mural with plant sales, Bingo and other fundraisers. And this year, Principal Donna Pierson and teachers went back to one of Estrada's original designs.

The rough concrete block wall made the execution punishing. Estrada had to apply multiple coats of concrete primer and tint it to the base color so white wouldn't show through the countless crevices and holes in the block. Brushes that should have lasted hours ground down in two. Rollers disintegrated as if dragged across sandpaper.

"Just imagine you had a roller and you're rolling over sandpaper," Estrada said. "It just eats up your roller quick."

Estrada and his son worked two 12-hour days.  They were limited to however high their ladder could reach the first day. The scaffolding arrived the next day, making it easier.

But the location made the suffering worthwhile. Unlike the classrooms and hallways where Estrada has painted school murals elsewhere, this one occupies the main entrance. Every student, teacher and parent who enters the building will see it first.

"It's almost like my Diego Rivera kind of thing where you go into the center and the first thing you see is that," Estrada said, his voice softening with admiration for the Mexican muralist who helped shape his artistic DNA.

Estrada, who was born and raised in East Los Angeles, grew up in a rich, diverse cultural environment populated by Chicano youth. He moved to Mexico City at 15, where he became enamored with the famous Mexican muralists Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros.

But he came to murals through graffiti, influenced by the New York train art of the 1970s, painting in L.A. riverbeds and street walls before receiving his first public commission from the city of Los Angeles in 1985.

That commission introduced him to Chicana artist Patssi Valdez, who connected him with the legendary Chicano muralists—East Los Streetscapers, David Botelho, Wayne Healy, George Lampis. They looked down on his aerosol roots. Graffiti writers, meanwhile, resented his Chicano imagery.

"Graffiti writers were like, 'What are you doing? We don't do that.' Chicanos were like, 'We don't use spray paint. We use brush,' " Estrada recalled. "And I'm like,’ I do what I want.’ "

That fusion of graffiti and traditional muralism got him noticed—and then snubbed. When the Museum of Contemporary Art organized its landmark 1992 "Revisions" exhibition on architecture and public art, a committee of 20 graffiti writers excluded Estrada because he "did Chicano stuff."

Then the main curator called and said there couldn't be a public art exhibition without the man who bridged both worlds. Estrada got an entire wall—and used it to paint a mural about censors being censored by graffiti writers.

"I am what I want to be," he said. "You can't tell me what I am. You can't give me the rules. I don't have any rules."

The curator bought the piece.

Since then, Estrada has produced a body of Chicano art across the country. About 80 percent of his interior school murals—some dating back to 1992—still exist today.

Exterior murals are another story. Weather takes its toll, but the bigger enemies are changing building ownership and, in Los Angeles, a decade-long mural moratorium that the city imposed in the late 1990s after graffiti writers began painting business signage in exchange for free wall space, blurring the legal line between mural and commercial sign.

One loss still haunts him. A peace mural in Highland Park—an Aztec warrior emerging from clouds above two gang members making a truce—was supposed to be preserved during a building project. The developers fenced it up, then stretched construction to four years, past the three-year statute of limitations for a lawsuit. When the scaffolding came down, the mural was gone.

"They lied to me," Estrada said. "So, we did a vigil for it. It's a murdered mural."

His son Deon, 23, has been at his side for much of the journey. Deon is an artist in his own right—a studio art graduate who started painting underwater scenes after a childhood visit to the Aquarium of the Pacific and "Finding Nemo" made him obsessed with aquatic life. He has since shifted toward Japanese-influenced art through his company Umi Gomies, working in the manga and Kawaii movements that have fused with American comic book culture at conventions across the country.

"He doesn't want to be a muralist," Estrada said of his son. "Murals are not his thing. He'll help me, but he'd rather do the Procreate work."

Estrada said he would love to return to the valley to paint a historical mural on Idaho history, something more mainstream and visible—perhaps along a boulevard rather than tucked into a park.

"Here, because you have mostly the natural landscape, a mural in a good location really pops out," he said, comparing the valley's appreciation for public art to Los Angeles, where murals have become so ubiquitous they blend into the urban landscape. "In L.A., you're bypassed. Here, people appreciate it."