Muralist Carlos Lopez leaves big marks around Stockton. Here's where you know his work
For more than 45 years, artist Carlos Lopez has left a large mark throughout northern California, quite literally. You’re likely probably seen his work, though you may not have known it was his. He has spent most of his career as a billboard and mural artist. Each large billboard you see is 14 feet tall by 48 feet wide.
Born and raised in Stockton, Lopez’s father, Richard P. Lopez, nurtured his talent early.
“My dad was cement finisher. When I was about 8 yrs old, he took my brother and I to a job,” recalls Lopez. “My dad was going to pour a big slab for a driveway, and before you pour the concrete, you make a smooth pad of sand. In that sand, with a long stick, I drew a picture. When the concrete truck driver came, he saw it and asked, ‘who drew that picture?’ Then my dad said, ‘my son.’ Then the truck driver said, ‘my wife has an art school, and your kid would benefit by going to that school because he’s artistic.’”
So Lopez was enrolled in the Harlequin House Galleries owned by Maxine Dalben in Stockton. “Through her, I learned many of the disciplines as a kid. In high school, I would do all the posters, big banners, the sets for the plays, and all that stuff.” By the time Lopez attended Delta College, he had had some artistic training already.
Lopez’s father was also a social activist fighting for farm workers rights. That work as an activist influenced Lopez. “Some of the first signs I painted were picket signs and protest signs because of my dad.”
After two years at Delta, Lopez studied art at Sacramento State University. “I went to Sac State and knew two art professors because they were very involved with the Chicano movement. And that’s why I went to Sac State because I wanted to study murals.”
Around 1976, Lopez was doing signs on his own, and he would visit the Scott Brothers Sign Company in Stockton for paint and supplies. “And then one day they asked me, ‘are you busy? We’re shorthanded, and we need someone to help us.’ So I went there the next morning at 8 a.m. and ended up working there for seven years. The guys I was working with were in their 50s. They were the old-timers, and I was the new kid. And I’m learning all this from these guys who had a lifetime of painting.”
Eventually, Lopez became sign foreman. He painted “Welcome to Stockton” and “Stockton Someplace Special” on the water tanks off of I-5 and Benjamin Holt Drive in Stockton. Years later, he replaced them with logos of Stockton’s sports teams which can still be seen today, long after some units disbanded.
In the 1980s, Lopez became a billboard artist for 3M Media in Stockton. “When I started working there, I ended up being a pictorial artist, which meant that I would paint signs for McDonald's, or Burger King, you know, for all the fast food restaurants or all the latest model cars. I painted a big Cadillac that was 40 feet long.”
“My area was northern California. Redding, Arcata, Eureka, Red Bluff. I had quite a territory all the way south to Gilroy.” Sometimes Lopez would even go all the way to Oregon and Nevada. “When I’d go on the road, generally it’d me be and another guy, like a team. And we’d have a service truck with everything we needed to paint the billboards on location. At that time, 3M serviced about 5,000 billboards.”
While he didn’t have much say in the design of the billboards, Lopez says the simplest ones were the best. Sometimes some designs had too many words, up to 30 or 40. “When you’re going down Highway 101 or I-5, that’s too many letters because you’re paying attention to your driving. But if it has five words and a picture, the picture draws your eye to the billboard. And then, you read the five words. That’s an effective billboard.”
Lopez specialized in “big signs and murals,” he says. “Then, occasionally, I’ll do a small work of art, but I don’t do any for myself. You know, after working 8 or 10 hours a day, I won’t come home and do a painting. I got leave some time for me to play my music”.
Lopez played the harmonica in high school, but at Delta, he took up the congas. Eventually, he became good enough to play in bands with Blues legends Bo Diddley and John Lee Hooker whenever they toured California. He currently plays conga in a trio called Primativo. “It’s kind of a Gypsy Kings-sounding group. We play Mexican music, some Latin jazz, and some Rock and Roll.”
In about 1997, computers started taking over billboard art. They would be printed at the shop on large canvasses and then taken and stretched over the billboard structures. “I got contractors license to do non-electrical signs and murals. So I’ve been doing them on my own since then.”
The murals are the most enduring pieces of Lopez’s legacy. He’s created them in several locations throughout the county. From Sierra and East Union high schools in Manteca to Edison and Lincoln in Stockton. He painted the colorfully playful mural on the front of the Children’s Museum of Stockton and building-sized paintings at the entrances to several Nugget Markets in the Central Valley. His latest work is a 101-ft by a 40-ft mural of a lion on the Price Rite building in downtown Stockton. Depending on the size, a project can take him two months to complete. One of his favorites is his mural in 2002 depicting John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary on an exterior wall at Annunciation school in Stockton.
In the 1970s, Lopez says work for murals wasn’t that common. “I couldn’t pay someone to hire me to paint a mural. Now murals are popular. At 71, Lopez is healthy and still paints murals and the occasional sign. He’ll be on a ladder, scaffolding, or lift for the foreseeable future, leaving his mark as big as he always has.
Record photographer Clifford Oto has photographed Stockton and San Joaquin County for over 38 years. He can be reached at coto@recordnet.com. To support local news, subscribe to The Stockton Record at https://www.recordnet.com/subscribenow.
This article originally appeared on The Record: Muralist Carlos Lopez work has brightened Stockton for decades
